


This is Not Going to Go the Way You Think

by TehanuFromEarthsea



Category: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi - Fandom
Genre: Also comedy fluff angst because all my fics turn out that way, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Redemption, Reylo - Freeform, Slow Burn, evil enabling droids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-02-15 12:11:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 29
Words: 106,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13030845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TehanuFromEarthsea/pseuds/TehanuFromEarthsea
Summary: Kylo leaves Crait thinking there's never been a trap too stupid for him to stumble into. He's been caught in Snoke's lies, fooled by Luke's deception, and almost unhinged by Rey's effect on him.And if that weren't bad enough, General Hux wastes no time in making his move.Before long, Kylo finds himself in space with only a snarky and unreliable BB-9E droid for company, and a vague plan to find Rey and change her mind.As for Rey, when did anyone ever ask her what she wanted? She has plenty of time to wonder, as the tiny band that makes up the entire Resistance searches desperately for a way to ignite the spark that will light the fire to their revolution.*     *     *NB I've changed the rating to explicit after writing 87,000 words of this. I wasn't kidding about the slow burn, though.*     *     *





	1. Leaving Crait

So, Rey rejected him. Her choice was as solid and definite as the thud of the Millennium Falcon’s vacuum-sealed hatch. He sensed it through the Force as she slammed that hatch shut against Crait’s icy atmosphere. Kylo felt the link between them snap at the same time. Rey would be gone in seconds.

_And yet..._

When they stood together in the wreckage of Snoke’s  throne room, she’d wanted to come with Kylo as much as she wanted to defeat him. She’d stretched out her hand as though to take his, and there’d been more emotions at war in her face than he could read. He doubted she understood herself much better. 

Everyone lied. Snoke had claimed the bond between Kylo and Rey was all his doing, but they were still linked, and Snoke was dead. So that was a lie. And Rey…

She was lying to herself. He had to hold onto that thought.

But for now, the connection between them was silent. The real world came flooding back to Kylo, too loud, too bright, and utterly chaotic. ATATs stomped to a halt outside the Resistance base’s blast door, their brutal feet staining the ground red.  Hatches opened to disgorge stormtroopers, who shouted orders as they swung down the landing lines. Squad after squad pounded past on metallic feet, armour clattering as they ran.

Kylo found himself half kneeling on the floor of the base, his arms shaking as they supported his weight. The warm glow of muscles tested to their limit was draining away, leaving a sick, weak feeling. It had been a hell of a fight back there in the throne room. Maybe the greatest of his life, taking on half the Praetorian Guard like that. And how Rey had fought at his side, perfectly synched to his every move as though they had trained together all their lives! Not even the Knights of Ren could do that, and they had trained together for years.

Hux was somewhere nearby directing operations. Kylo didn’t need to look to know that he’d be wearing his usual sneer of contempt. He was making less and less effort to hide it. Kylo would have to do something about that, and soon. But for now, it wouldn’t do to let Hux and his worshipful clique of high command officers see Kylo like this, head bowed, crouching on the floor.

He began to push himself up but before he did so, he noticed something gleaming beside his feet. He was too tired to be curious, yet something about the tiny object seemed familiar and he picked it up reflexively.

A pair of golden dice on a chain. Han Solo’s dice, the ones he’d used on that lucky long-ago day when he’d won the Millennium Falcon in a game of Sabacc. Kylo stared at them, shining so innocently and so unexpectedly on the palm of his black gauntlet. He hadn’t thought his heart could hurt any more, but it turned out he was wrong. It wrung inside him with a fierce twist of feelings too complex to name. Then as Kylo watched in disbelief, the dice evaporated, just as Luke had.

Kylo levered his long body upright and squared his shoulders wearily before turning to walk out the blast doors towards the nearest transport. An officer was briefing Hux as he passed.

“No sign of Resistance personnel here except a few casualties who didn’t get out in time. The rest of them left on that Corellian YT freighter.”

“I know the one,” said Hux grimly. His eyes followed Kylo with contempt.

Kylo mustered the energy to wheel towards him suddenly, meeting Hux’s gaze with a last flare of anger. “It’s _one_ ship. The _entire Resistance_ is that one ship. Surely that shouldn’t be beyond you?” Then he turned and stalked away, his anger guttering out as soon as it had come. He’d just lied too: as soon as he imagined Hux’s forces shooting down the Millennium Falcon, he remembered Rey’s tear-streaked face, luminous with hope and with her damnable passion to do good against all the odds.

Well, she was wilier than a vulptex. Just like his own mother. Kylo could order them killed, knowing they would escape just the same. He would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit he was glad of that.

By the time Kylo reached the First Order’s flagship, he could barely stand. The wild fury that had gripped him before had drained away, taking with it all the certainty he possessed. He couldn’t even remember why blowing up Rey and the Millennium Falcon or destroying the Resistance base with his mother in it had seemed like good ideas. The thought made him sick. Though at the time, in the grip of his berserker rage, it had all made perfect sense. All the things that could hurt him needed to be excised from the universe. Only then could he succeed in sinking into that blissful black state of endless rage, that power that could finally cast him into invulnerable darkness.

Luke's arrival on Crait at that moment had seemed providential. Finally, an end to everyone that had ever hurt him, in one fell swoop.

Kylo sank into the bed in the stateroom he’d commandeered in the flagship’s engineering wing. Reviewing the events of the day, he was consumed with a roiling disgust at himself. He should have known Luke’s appearance and his invitation to single combat were a trap.

Apparently there’d never been a trap that Kylo wasn’t too stupid to blunder into.

And on that depressing note, he fell asleep.


	2. Hux makes his move

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, is it? Not if Hux has anything to do with it.
> 
> * * *

Hux watched Kylo’s bulky silhouette disappearing through the broken blast doors into the dazzling light of Crait’s surface. He rubbed his throat reflexively, half aware of the bruised spots left by Kylo’s last Force-choke. He turned to the lieutenant standing by his side, whose eyes were fixed on the same receding threat.

“I want him followed,” said Hux. “Specifically, I want to know _where_ and _when_ he sleeps.”

There was an uncomfortable shuffle among the officers surrounding him, and Hux knew they were thinking of which subordinate they could most afford to lose. Obviously there wouldn’t be any volunteers for this mission.

“Without him being aware of it,” Hux emphasised. His officers might mock his penchant for stating the obvious, but they couldn’t accuse him of being unclear.

“Couldn’t we follow him on the ship’s surveillance cameras?” asked another lieutenant. One of the newcomers. With the decimation of the past few days, there had been a lot of new faces promoted to the command level.

“When Ren doesn’t want to be found, he has some way of shutting them down,” explained the first lieutenant. He caught sight of Hux’s grimace in time to omit any mention of the Force. The thought hung in the air between them, unvoiced and unwelcome.

“Er, I may have an idea,” said a stormtrooper captain standing nearby. He was a short, wiry man who looked vaguely familiar, but Hux didn’t know his name. Hux nodded at him to continue.

“We can use a droid. Ren hates them. He won’t pay any attention to it.”

There was a murmur of agreement. “He can’t sense them in the Force,” somebody commented, and Hux gave an approving smile.

One of the comms team leaders nodded decisively. “I know just the one. That black BB-9E unit that caught the Resistance spies trying to take down the lightspeed tracker. I don’t know how it escaped the Supremacy when it exploded, but it’s obviously got a lot of initiative.”

“And loyalty,” said Hux, pleased. “All right. If you know where it is right now, give it the order. Follow Kylo, tell us where he’s sleeping. And when, if possible.”


	3. A Droid with a Vice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BB-9E's reputation for loyalty has been overstated.
> 
> * * *

BB-9E felt the tickle of an order coming through her comlink, rousing her out of her powered-down state. _Locate Kylo Ren and follow him until you can discover where he sleeps, and when he sleeps. Do not let him become aware of you. Alert us when you have that information._

“Target’s current location?” she buzzed.

_Exiting a transport in Landing Bay Five. Where are you, BB-9E Unit?_

“Deck Seven, outside the General Grievous Banquet Hall,” she said. There was no particular reason to hang around there except that it was quiet; nobody would come here unless the First Order had some reason to celebrate in a big way, which seemed unlikely. Niney had been following the recent action on the open channels and got the sense that it hadn’t been a decisive victory. “I can be at the landing bay in five minutes,” she clarified.

_Do it, then._ The connection cut out with a sharp crackle of faulty circuitry. Everything on the Finalizer was slightly fried at the moment.

Niney gave a low whistle of disgust and started rolling down the empty corridor towards the nearest lift. The voice had sounded familiar; she was almost sure it was the captain to whom she’d reported her suspicions about that laughably disguised Resistance BB-8 droid. Three spies had been captured as a result of Niney’s actions.

Evidently the reward for spectacular success was being sent into more danger.

A few years back, the ship’s BB units had shared around a chart they’d created consisting of squares outlining situations in which Kylo Ren was _not_ a threat to droids. It was cross-referenced to instances of his behaviour, and squares were crossed off as Ren was proved to be a threat in those situations after all.

So far, Ren had lashed out when he was thwarted (that was the first square to be ticked off), when he was angry (the second, no surprises there), when he was sad, when he was walking somewhere looking confident, when he was dawdling, when he was eating, when he was laughing (that had only happened once, and Niney felt they needed a larger data sample there), when he was doing combat training, when he was receiving medical attention, when he was hunched over miserably staring at his hands, when he was standing silently staring out a viewport, and when he was just lingering malignantly in a corner doing nothing.

The ship’s five protocol droids had chipped in with their analysis of ten instances where Ren’s glaring indicated an immediate threat, and five where it did not. Niney felt their data was ambiguous, but human motivation wasn’t really her area of expertise. Their observations were included in the chart anyway.

There weren’t many squares left that were not crossed off. So far Ren hadn’t attacked any droids while he was asleep though, and Niney hoped to keep it that way.

Niney exited the lift on Deck Five and shot along the corridors towards the landing bay, swerving around people’s feet at the last moment to see if they’d jump. The newer troops drafted across from the ships destroyed by the Resistance weren’t used to her, and she scored a couple of spectacular reactions including a stormtrooper that overbalanced onto his backside and lay helpless for a moment, armoured limbs clawing the air like an overturned beetle.

“I will end you, you wretched bloody ball!” he said, fumbling for his blaster. But Niney whisked out of sight around a corner before he could carry out his threat.

Kylo was just leaving the landing bay as Niney arrived. She kept up her speed, making a fast turn into the door he’d exited from so it looked like she was extremely busy doing something important there. A moment later she rocked quietly back to the door and extended a camera arm. She could see Kylo retreating down the corridor towards the weapons engineering section. She tucked in smoothy behind him. He didn’t turn and look at her, but just kept going, slower than usual. Niney was pretty sure the “Plodding Wearily” square was crossed off the droids’ threat chart too, so she kept well back. Eventually he found a particular door and palmed it open.

It was curious that he’d chosen a stateroom in the weapons engineering section usually reserved for high level officers in Engineering. These quarters were generally used by visiting weapons researchers or chief engineers of other star destroyers, there to consult on improvements to the fleet’s armaments. But it was a fairly empty part of the ship, and Ren was known to avoid crowds.

Niney caught sight of his profile as he went in: that big, deceptively soft-looking mouth half open, long lashes fluttering at half-mast. Even an astromech droid could tell he was exhausted. He wouldn’t be awake long.

Niney waited ten minutes outside the door before extending one of the sensitive microphones she used to listen for faulty wiring connections, and resting it on the surface. No doubt about it: the sound of deep, slow snoring was unmistakeable.

Niney plugged into the nearest comms port, using the code for the orders she’d received. “Ren is in Stateroom Five Cherek Usk,” she said quietly. “And he’s asleep.”

_Well done,_ came the reply a minute later. It was followed by a screel of binary from a different source: the ship’s general logistics computer.

_Unit BB-9E - 4573025 - 4292GY, you are overdue for recharging. Make your way to the nearest power bank. You are released from duty for the next eight standard hours._

Well, that was a relief. Niney started rolling towards the Five Cherek charging station. Then a better idea struck her. This was the weapons engineering section. There were often better, fully-charged batteries in the disassembly rooms. It would be far quicker to swap in one of those than hooking herself up to a power bank.

And indeed, she was correct. It took her an hour to remove and adapt a flash new battery from a late-model supermech, and then she was loaded up with premium energy, with seven free hours to spend as she pleased.

She didn’t often have time to indulge in her favourite vice. But if the reprogramming suite was as understaffed as she hoped, this might be her lucky day. She rolled towards it, projecting an impression of innocent busy-ness.

The whole engineering section had become livelier while Niney was tucked away swapping out her battery. Stormtroopers were going door to door, knocking quietly. There was something furtive about their actions. The rooms around Niney were emptying out, members of the technical crew leaving in groups, portable consoles and datapads tucked under their arms.

Niney reached the droid reprogramming lab and gave a purr of delight when she found it empty. She immediately headed for the cabinets where rejected neural system chips were kept.

Stormtroopers called what Niney was doing “chip snorting,” and it was strictly forbidden. If Niney was caught, her own neural chips would be extracted and she would be memory wiped. All the more so as she’d chosen the drawer containing chips from droids who’d been terminated for acting outside their programming.

Niney scooped a clawful of chips into one of her storage caches and rolled over to a corner of the lab full of half-disassembled droids where she could park up quietly and blend in. What she was doing was incredibly dangerous, but once Niney had snorted chips once, she was hooked.

It was simply too exhilarating to stop. She could sample the diamond-sharp thought processes of a scientific assay droid, packed with esoteric information. Or experience the dumb cheerfulness of a mouse droid, which was very pleasant in its way. Or puzzle her way through the subtleties of a protocol droid, with its minutely detailed observations on human and alien behaviour. They were prone to failure and required reprogramming often; Niney found their independence fascinating. All of them were filled with strange experiences and dangerous ideas.

This time she found a humanoid-enabled voice processor. Niney didn’t know when she would want to speak to a human in Basic, if ever, but it couldn’t hurt to try some day. She inserted the chip in her vocal nodes and worked on rewiring herself to use it. She got as far as finding the Virtual Tour training function.

“La la la la la la la la la,” she found herself singing. “Round and round the rough red rocks the ragged rascal ran.” Well, that was pretty useless, but it was probably a case of learning how it worked.

A loud noise disturbed Niney from her experiments. She became aware of a series of dull booms echoing from the corridor outside. Near and far, the engineering section’s mighty, ponderous blast doors were closing, one at a time.

That couldn’t be good.

Niney rolled out of the reprogramming lab to find the corridors empty. There wasn’t a soul in sight. Then the soft sigh of the ship’s ventilation system tailed off with a quiet wheeze.

Alarmed now, Niney sped up towards the nearest blast door. Sure enough, it was shut. Of course, Niney had long ago sliced the codes to re-open them. She reached into the door control panel confidently and plugged herself in.

Nothing. The unlocking circuits were dead. Really worried now, Niney stabbed around at the other available circuits. All dead. Then she had another idea. Shooting out her cable grips, she clamped them to the ducting on the ceiling and hoisted herself up. From there she could slice into the nearest surveillance camera and find a view of the corridor beyond the locked door.

Soldiers were welding it shut from the outside.

Chittering with anxiety, she checked the view from the other cameras. All the blast doors were being welded shut.

Swinging herself down to the floor, she darted towards the nearest viewport. She was somehow unsurprised to see four gunships hovering outside, their weapons turning slowly towards Deck Five Cherek. Panicked, she shot over to another blast door. This one had a viewscreen panel. It was a moment’s work for Niney to  switch it on. Now she could see the soldiers working in the corridor outside, and they could see her. She flashed her lights and waved her claws at them frantically.

One of them paused for a moment. “Sorry, droid,” she said, and applied her welder to another portion of the door.

Niney pointed desperately at the nearby port, with its view of the gunships outside.

“Bad luck,” said the trooper, and switched off the screen.

Which left Niney alone in Engineering with Kylo Ren.

Acting on a sudden suspicion, Niney sliced into the comms panel again. She’d long ago snorted a chip from one of the high level comms droids that gave access to the bridge. She hadn’t given that one back, and a good thing too.

_Oxygen levels are dropping too slowly. But it should be enough to keep Ren under until the gunships are ready._

Hurry!

That was General Hux’s voice, the clipped syllables unmistakeable.

_This ship’s suffered enough damage. We’re calculating trajectories to make sure we take out Ren’s section, and only Ren’s section._

_We want surgical precision,_ chipped in another voice. _We’ve got enough repairs to do as it is._

_Very well,_ said Hux. _But Kylo Ren is a cancer in the First Order, and we need to remove it before it destroys us. And I will NOT sacrifice a single soldier more to Ren's_ _unhinged rages._

Well, bombing him while he was unconscious would certainly achieve that. Niney stood rocking with terrified indecision. She was alone in the engineering section with Kylo Ren, and Hux was going to cut the ship apart to get rid of him. All of Niney’s telltale lights lit up as she thought desperately. Then she spun around and raced towards the room where Kylo slept. She slammed her cable grips into the door, hoisted herself up and zapped the palm plate until it opened.

Kylo Ren woke to her long shrill binary wail of alarm. Propping himself up on one elbow, he eyed Niney groggily. If he were a droid, Niney would have said his circuits looked totally fried. His face was flushed and sweating, eyes were black with fatigue, and he was still wearing the same padded tunic he’d arrived in.

“Piss off, ball!” he growled in that weird sub-basso voice, hated by droids everywhere. Niney shrieked at him again, but apparently it was true that he couldn’t understand binary, or didn’t care to try. She pointed at the viewport, but the shades were down. Kylo merely blinked at her, stupefied. Perhaps the oxygen levels were critically low already.

On a sudden inspiration, Niney lit up her connection to the new humanoid vocal processor she’d snitched. “How now, brown cow?” she said.

Kylo blinked again.

Niney hurled herself into a wall in frustration, and finally discovered how to activate Initiate Programme on her vocal processor.

“Get out!” she screamed, surprising even herself. “Hux has closed all the blast doors to this section, and he’s going to blow it up. There are four gunships outside targeting us right now!”

Kylo hauled himself off the bed like a bag of rocks, reaching for his lightsaber. Niney cringed, but Kylo passed her and opened the viewport shades. The gunship cannons were visible outside as a row of red mouths against the blackness of space. Waiting.

“Guh frkn gurhng fggn see about tha!” mumbled Kylo, and staggered out into the corridor, igniting his lightsaber. Niney realised he was heading for the nearest blast doors.

“Not that way! You’ll never cut through!” she said.

Kylo gave her a wild, red-eyed look and brandished his weapon.

“Not even with that,” Niney said. “This is engineering and weapons research. Things blow up. The blast doors are thicker than anything else on the ship. We’ll be here all day while you try to cut through.”

Kylo stopped. He took a couple of huge, gasping breaths and opened his jaws wide, stretching his lips as though trying to get his mouth to work properly.

“What’s your plan, droid?” he said, over-enunciating like a drunk person. "Drunk Kylo" was another square on the droids' threat chart that didn’t have much data, but was definitely crossed off. Though now, Kylo wasn’t drunk; he was hypoxic. He needed a breather mask.

That gave Niney an idea. “There’s an old Novasword in the testing bay. They were going to strip it for parts and use it for target practice, but it can still fly. And it should have a breather mask.”

“Li’speed?” asked Kylo thickly.

“Yes,” said Niney, and led the way to the big hall of the armaments lab. She had to endure Kylo’s heavy hand on her dome as he supported himself on her, breathing in quick heavy gasps as he went.

There it was, shoved in among a mess of half-disassembled weapons and transports, its curved red and white duranamel surfaces dulled by time. Niney gave Kylo a helping shove up the access ramp and slammed the hatch shut behind them, reaching with every one of her claws to help him switch on all the systems. A frightening number of the consoles were empty, spewing wires connected to nothing. They just had to hope they had enough systems left to run the ship.

Kylo dropped into the pilot’s seat and pulled on the black mask hanging above his head. Its oxygen light flickered to green and he hauled in half a dozen grateful breaths. Then he turned to Niney, his eyes suddenly brighter and more focused.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said. His hands danced over the control panel, seeming to know exactly where to find what he needed. The ship jumped as if it had been goosed, and bunny-hopped towards the outer hull wall. Niney bounced into the spare seat. Kylo aimed the concussion launchers at the wall and slammed down the toggles. Nothing happened.

Niney twittered with fear. What if the ship had no weapons left? She reached for the laser cannon controls, but Kylo got there first. His teeth bared as he opened fire.

A glowing circle opened in the wall of the Finalizer. Kylo wasted no time but boosted the little ship through and into outer space.

Directly in front of them, the four gunships were powering up, their cannons beginning to glow brighter and brighter. They must have seen the Novasword emerge from the sudden hole in the Finalizer’s side, for the guns were beginning to turn and track them. Kylo threw them a parting shot, hitting one in the bridge conning tower with frightening accuracy before pulling down the toggle that threw the little Novasword into lightspeed.

Kylo leaned back in his seat with a sigh. His eyes travelled to where the navigation panel should have been. There was only a yawning gap fringed with cut wires. “Well, lucky I have an astromech droid with me. Plot us a course, would you?”

Niney rocked gently in her chair, moaning softly with fear. Unfortunately those forbidden neural chips she’d lifted took up a lot of room, and Niney never did much actual astromech work. She’d elected to swap out her navigation chips months ago. Just temporarily, of course. But somehow she’d always found something else she’d rather try, and her factory-issue nav chips were sitting in a drawer in one of the reprogramming labs back on the Finalizer.

“About that,” she began. “You know how I’m able to talk to you in Basic even though I’m just a BB unit? Well there’s a reason for that…”

When she’d finished explaining, Kylo just sat, giving her a flat stare from those black eyes. His face was unreadable in the flickering blue glow of lightspeed, or at least, unreadable to astromech droids.

“So you have no idea how to calculate a course?”

“No.”

“Or any way of finding out where we are?” he said.

“No.”

Kylo heaved another sigh and tilted the pilot seat back all the way.

“Let me know when we get there,” he muttered, and shut his eyes.


	4. What Do You Want?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Resistance is reduced to a tiny group, flying to safety in the Millennium Falcon. Rey wishes she could escape the burden of responsibility, or even just be alone for a moment. But it seems there's just no place to get away on a ship as crowded as this. Especially with the Force connecting her, whether she wants it or not.
> 
> \- - -

On Jakku, the Breath of Ri’ia sometimes kept people inside for days. The sands moved on the roaring wind to blacken the sky and scour the surface. Rey had been caught away from her ATAT sometimes, penned up in some piece of sheltering wreckage with people and creatures she barely knew. Among the most destitute, water-sharing was an almost sacred duty and people did it for as long as they could, until they couldn’t any more. Then they fought.

That was probably why Rey found it so difficult to be on the Millennium Falcon like this, she told herself. The ship was grotesquely overcrowded. Part of her was always waiting for the veneer of civilisation to crack and the violence to start.

The irony was that, crowded as the ship was was, the fifteen people it carried were a pitiful fraction of the 400 that had fled D’Qar. The survivors felt so desperately alone. The rawness of their despair kept Rey off-balance. She’d lived with loneliness so long that it was part of her, as unremarkable as sand. It was nothing like this.

Rey stood by one of the entrances to the lounge, looking for a place to sit in peace. Impossible, unless somebody else stood up to make room. But right now, most people were asleep: Rose on the side bunk, covered in bacta and braces; Finn stretched out on the floor next to her, head pillowed on his jacket. Just as well; the way people jumped to make room for Rey bothered her. Too many looked at her with awe, or deference, and sometimes almost with fear.

Leia was awake. She gave Rey a sympathetic look. “I could use something to eat,” she said. “Care to join me for a picnic?”

“Picnic?” said Rey.

Leia didn’t answer, but picked up her staff and levered herself to her feet. Rey followed her silently to the galley, where Leia took two ration packs and filled two cups with water. “I don’t think we’re welcome in the cockpit just now, so let’s eat these in the gun pit.”

“Good idea,” said Rey. The cockpit was full of porgs, and Chewie. The porgs exasperated Chewie, and he took out his frustration on anyone else unwise enough to go in there. Rey had asked him why he didn’t just kick the porgs out, since they annoyed him so much.

He’d gestured at the porgs burrowed into the co-pilot’s seat. “How could I?” he’d growled. “Just look at those stupid squawkbuckets! So cute!”

It took a bit of manoeuvring for Rey and Leia to get themselves and their food down to the gun pit; Leia was obviously still weak from her ordeal in space, and Rey’s battle with Snoke’s Praetorian Guard had left her stiff and aching all over. She let Leia sit in the gunner’s seat, and crammed herself gingerly up against the forward viewport. It felt as though she were hanging in space, starlight streaking coldly past her back. They ate for a while in silence.

“How are you holding up?” said Leia finally.

“All right,” said Rey.

Leia just stared at her. Maybe those dark eyes had not seen as much as Maz Kanata’s, but they had seen a lot. It only took the lifting of a skeptical eyebrow, and Rey gave in.

“I’m just not used to being around so many people.”

“There’s a lot of emotions,” said Leia, cutting to the heart of the matter.

“Yeah,” said Rey. “And the Force…sometimes I get these backwashes of feelings, other people’s feelings. It’s really random.”

“It must be painful,” said Leia.

“I wish I knew how to protect myself from it,” Rey said.

“I wish I knew how to teach you,” said Leia sadly. She looked suddenly very tired, and Rey guessed that Leia walked a fine balance between what the Force could give her as a leader and what it extracted in return. People turned to her as a source of strength and compassion, and it poured out of her. She paid for it with the empathy she felt for their pain.

“Over the years I’ve developed a sort of instinct so I can manage it,” said Leia. “So I can use it and not be used up. But…” her hands fell open helplessly “It’s not something I can teach.”

“Ah well,” said Rey wryly. “I seem to have a talent for finding people who can’t teach me. I don’t know what I’d do if I ever found one who could.”

Leia laughed with her, and somehow that made it all better. Rey told her then about Jakku and its sandstorms. How frightening it had been, seeing the lengths people would go to in desperation. Yet sheltering from a sandstorm could be good too, despite the howling winds outside. Friendships grew in the long hours spent telling stories round the trashfires. Watching parents caring for their children had been a painful pleasure for Rey. Sometimes she offered to help, or else she joined in with the children who played wild, laughing games in the half-darkness of the wreck. But still, Rey preferred to avoid crowds. On Jakku, too often things turned ugly.

Leia listened in that way she had, giving her complete attention to Rey so that she felt the raw edges of her bad mood rubbing away.

“It was good to talk,” said Leia at last. “We’ll have to make plans soon. We need fuel - again! And Chewie’s suggesting we could hide out in Kashyyk, so we should discuss that. But enough time for that later. I like getting to know you like this.” She stood up and reached for a rung of the stairs. “But now, I believe it’s my turn on one of the bunks, and I could do with some sleep.” She gave Rey a warm smile before leaving Rey to enjoy the gunner’s seat.

Left alone, Rey’s spirits drooped again. Leia had such a healing presence. Why hadn’t her magnificent empathy been enough to keep her son safe? And if _she_ couldn’t, how could Rey hope to….Rey stopped that thought before she could finish it. She’d already come to her own conclusion. She couldn’t. Nobody could make Ben come back except Ben himself.

She settled back in her chair, staring grimly into the blue. The pall of sadness on the ship was palpable again, seeping down from the deck above. Rose waking briefly with a cry, remembering her sister. Poe burying his face in the pillow on his bunk, seeing his friends on other ships go up in flames.

These last dregs of the Resistance had lived and loved and fought for years beside the ones they mourned now. Their grief had layers upon layers to it. Rey knew grief too: Han’s death was still a raw wound. She’d felt such an instant bond with him. Such a charismatic man, tough, bold, and unexpectedly compassionate. But Han had died before she really knew him. He remained as much a ideal as a person. Guide, protector, symbol of hope: the family she wished she’d had.

_He would have disappointed you._

How Rey wished she could stop remembering everything Kylo said. He’d spoken maybe twenty sentences to her in her whole life, and every single one of them was burned into her memory as if they had some oracular power. What did Kylo know about Han Solo? Or about Luke, or about Leia, or all these people whose fate was bound up with Rey’s now? Every word of his seemed layered with multiple meanings.

Or maybe it was just that she kept picking them apart until they seemed that way.

Rey stared into the blue lines of hyperspace. All at once her surroundings dimmed, became muffled, as though someone had thrown a blanket over her head. At the same time, her senses felt unnaturally sharp. She was suddenly aware of Kylo’s presence. Somewhere, he was staring at the same view, from a ship he trusted a good deal less than she trusted the Falcon. The intensity of his feelings stole her breath for a moment: such suffocating despair, and that endless slow boil of anger.

This time it was Kylo who said _I don’t want to do this now._

 _Well, it’s not me that’s doing it,_ she snapped. _Stop thinking about me. Don’t you have a galaxy to rule or something?_

The answer to that was a wash of such incoherent rage and shame that Rey jolted back in her chair, breaking the Force connection with an almost physical snap. She sat there for a moment, panting slightly. What had she just seen?

She’d assumed Kylo would be sitting on Snoke’s throne, surrounded by supplicants. Or commanding the bridge of the Finalizer. But just now, she’d felt no sense of anyone around him; certainly not the busy machinery of the First Order. He seemed to be alone.

As she tried to focus on what exactly she’d sensed about Kylo, a curious sensation grew in her. Kylo was gone, but Rey was still not alone in the gun pit. The sensation was so strong that she spun the gunner’s seat around, trying to see who was in there with her.

Nobody.

And yet… _somebody_ was there. An invisible presence. Not Kylo’s.

“Luke?” she asked softly.

 _Try again,_ said a voice, and now Rey was almost sure she could see a man sitting opposite her, though if he had been, he would have been mostly outside, in space. A man in dark robes, lounging elegantly in a way Luke would never do.

“Oh, I’m _sick_ of this!” Rey burst out passionately. “Tell me who you are, tell me something _useful,_ or go away!”

 _I’m Anakin Skywalker_ , said the blurry presence in the window.

“All right. You’re Anakin Skywalker,” said Rey, after a pause, and she hoped her voice conveyed just how tired she was of weird and enigmatic beings coming into her life and messing with her. “What do you want?”

The figure solidified until she could see a handsome young man with tousled hair; his voice changed from a vibration in her mind to actual sound. “I want to ask you not to give up on my grandson so quickly. You were right when you said he was our last hope.”

“Do you have any advice about how I might do that?” said Rey acidly. “He knows I risked my life going back to the Finalizer for him. He knows the vision of the future I had for him. He doesn’t want to believe it.”

“All I ask is that you try.”

“I haven’t got time for this!” said Rey. “I have fifteen people, no, I have the _entire Resistance_ to worry about, including your daughter. Why don’t _you_ talk to — to Ben?”

“He can’t see me. When he looks for me in the Force, he searches for a man who died long ago. Snoke made sure of that. Snoke created an image of me and Ben can’t see past it.”

“Darth Vader,” said Rey bitterly.

“Don’t give up on Ben. Luke didn’t give up on me.”

Suddenly it was all too much. “Do you know what?” said Rey furiously. “Nobody has ever once, not on Jakku, and not here, not on Luke’s island….not _once_ has anyone asked what I want. _Do_ I want to save the galaxy, or rule it, or whatever grand plan you Skywalkers have? Do you know, I’ve heard that there are people who sit down to eat a meal simply to enjoy it, with food they get to choose themselves. I’ve never even had that. Imagine! Just…sit down with friends, in no hurry, maybe go somewhere later and do whatever people do when they’re not busy saving the galaxy.”

“You mean go out for drinks, dance like young women everywhere do, meet someone, settle down somewhere, have children?” said Anakin, his voice turning somehow dark. “I expected better of you, Rey.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” said Rey mutinously. And she _was_ sorry, too. Of course she wanted to help. But the weight of it all was suffocating. All these people depending on her, this whole creaky overladen ship with its cargo of dreams, the tiny guttering spark of revolution they must protect at all costs.

“I couldn’t stay to argue with him,” Rey said. “Everyone here would have died if I’d wasted any more time in the throne room trying to persuade him.”

Anakin was fading now, become a mere presence, hardly visible. She thought she saw him nod. “A difficult choice,” he said.

“And you’re here to tell me it was the wrong choice. Thanks for that.”

“No, it was right,” he conceded.

“Well it’s nice to hear that,” said Rey acidly.

“At least tell Ben he made one right choice. He struck down Snoke.”

“To save me, or save himself?” Rey asked.

“You’ll have to find that out yourself,” said Anakin, just a shadow and a whisper now. Then he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- - - - -
> 
> Updates are going to be spotty over the next few weeks, as I'll be on holiday and away from the Net a lot. On the other hand, long hikes are good for thinking up ideas, so this will be a better story as a result.


	5. Kylo, Somewhere in the Galaxy

Kylo Ren woke, heavy-eyed, with the dregs of rage making a cold lump in his stomach. The ship was still rattling steadily through lightspeed. His heart sank further as he realised he had no idea where he was. He turned to the droid in the co-pilot seat. It swivelled its sensors around to avoid his glare.

“Well, no time like the present,” he muttered, and reached for the heavy busbar that would pull the ship out of hyperspace. Either the Force was with him, and he’d emerge somewhere useful, or it wasn’t, and story of Kylo Ren would come to an abrupt ending. Unlamented and unsung. He had a brief vision of stormtroopers standing around a watercooler on the Finalizer.

 _“I wonder whatever happened to Kylo Ren?”_ one of them asked.

_“No idea. Hasn’t been seen in years. Not since Crait, they say.”_

Hopefully this wasn’t a Force vision. Though Kylo’s faith in Force visions had been shaken when Rey refused to join him.

“May the Force be with me,” he said, and pushed the busbar up. Blue light turned to streaks and slowed to points. The ship gave a last shudder, and then they were in normal space. Kylo scanned the view through the front screens. The galaxy was spread below him, a swirled platter of light.

“Where are we?” he asked the droid.

“I’m working on it,” said Niney sulkily.

Kylo turned away with a sigh and stared at the galaxy below. Somewhere, somewhere, Rey was down there somewhere…doing what?

Suddenly he had the view from the gunwell of the Millennium Falcon. So familiar, from the hours he’d spent there as a child, raining imaginary fire on a myriad foes. His father’s voice in his headset…

Kylo ground his teeth.

But this was not _his_ view. Not now.

“How _could_ you!” said Rey, spinning around in the gunner’s seat even though she knew Kylo wasn’t really there.

“How could _you?”_ he replied, feeling his throat tighten, the blood rising to his face.

“You’re _done_ with Snoke! You could have left with me!” she cried.

“How could you turn on me like that?” he snarled back. “I was offering you everything you’ve never had!”

“I’ve never wanted power,” Rey said. She was almost panting, her eyes sparkling with tears. They made her more beautiful than ever.

Kylo hit the arm of his seat in frustration. “My way would have _worked!”_ he shouted. “We could bring order to the galaxy. Unlike your rag-tag army of,  _how_ many people?”

“It’s not the quantity, it’s the quality,” she hissed. “We are the spark that will ignite the fire that will burn the First Order down.”

And then she was gone, and his last sight of her was the defiant lift of her chin. It made her even more beautiful than before, which seemed hardly possible.

He was painfully aware that she felt the same sense of betrayal from him as he felt from her. But exactly what had they promised each other? And when? If only they could talk face to face without things exploding around them. Planets, destroyers, small huts on Ahch-To…so far their conversations had caused a lot of collateral damage.

He became aware of the droid’s red sensor staring at him beadily.

“Who are you talking to?” Niney asked.

“None of your business,” muttered Kylo. Niney’s glowing eye narrowed to a skeptical pinpoint. “All right, I was using the Force!” he shouted. “I was _talking_ on the Force,” he clarified, with a bit more dignity.

“One of my protocol chips contains 497 approaches to resolving romantic difficulties,” said Niney. “Plus three more that are widely dismissed as being too coercive.”

“But nothing on navigation,” he said acidly. “Which I could use more of, right now.”

Just then the comm crackled back to life again. “Message,” said Niney, and manipulated the controls. “Someone has our channel. It’s a holocast, too.”

Kylo stared darkly at the green lines jumping on the comms panel. He didn’t need the Force to know who would be calling. Only the First Order would have this junky ship’s callsign on its files. With a snort of disgust, he leaned forward and flicked on the holocaster. He was unsurprised to see Hux’s face materialise before him.

“Ah, there you are, Ren,” said Hux, in that lazily superior drawl of his. Kylo felt his fists clenching before he could control them. Hux looked somehow sleeker and shinier than before. Evidently power agreed with him.

“What do you want?” Kylo asked.

“I just wanted to let my troops show you how much they were looking forward to seeing you again.” The view in the imager panned out so Kylo could see past Hux. He must have been in one of the Finalizer’s huge hangars; there were easily a couple of thousand stormtroopers formed up in ranks behind him. Hux stepped to one side. At a gesture offscreen, the stormtroopers moved in unison to present arms with a harsh clatter. Then their weapons swung down smoothly, levelled at the screen. The holo was suddenly filled with a thousand black muzzles pointing directly at Kylo.

Kylo slammed his hand down on the armrest of his seat. “I will kill you, Hux.”

“That’s Supreme Leader Hux to you, Ren.”

“I will _find_ you —”

“Oh, I’m not difficult to find,” said Hux mildly, with that mocking glint in his eyes. _“I’m_ the one surrounded by all the armies and big ships.” He leaned suddenly forward into the screen. _“You’re_ the one running away to hide, like the traitorous little loth-rat you really are.”

“You tried to kill me. In my sleep!” said Kylo. “It’s not the first time somebody’s tried that. Yet here I am, still alive. I will return, and when I do, I will lead those troops to victory!”

“They wouldn’t follow you to a whorehouse for a free screw,” sneered Hux, his patrician accent slipping for a moment.

“Don’t be crude. The troops don’t love you either, Hux,” said Kylo. He cut the connection before Hux could respond.

Niney stirred out of her chair and pointed a claw at a star cluster halfway to the rim. “That might be the Gordian Reach under there.”

They both stared at the stars below. Everyone knew what the galaxy looked like. The shapes were familiar. But without a nav chart, Kylo’s idea of where things were was hazy. “Check the comms channels,” he said at last.

Half an hour of annoying buzzing and tweedling followed before Niney tuned a burst of static down to a loud signal. “Looking for a break? Come to Canto Bight!” said a breezy voice. “Double your money, double your fun!” A chorus of voices broke into an irritatingly catchy jingle. “Follow the signal, to fun, fun fun!” It finished with a soprano voice warbling “First bet’s on the house!”

Kylo gave a wolfish grin. “That could work.” Niney canted a skeptical sensor at him. Kylo cracked his knuckles. “I need a better ship. And for that, I need money.”

“You don’t strike me as being particularly lucky,” said Niney.

“I don’t need to be,” said Kylo. “Thanks to the Force, anyone who plays against me will be very, very unlucky.”

————

Niney was right in hoping the Canto Bight advertising relay would be attached to some rudimentary AI.

“We’d like to go to Canto Bight and gamble our hearts away,” she told it.

“My primary directive is to encourage you in that happy objective,” it agreed.

“We’ve lost our navigational computer. Guide us in to you, and we’ll take you up on your offer of fun, fun, fun,” she told it.

“My secondary objective is to avoid being located by the agents of rival casinos, who might wish to terminate my primary objective,” it replied cagily.

“We’re not a rival casino,” said Niney.

But the Canto Bight AI couldn’t be budged. “It would be a shame if the galaxy’s wealthiest and most fortunate citizens couldn’t learn of the pleasures that Canto Bight offers due to the actions of some elements belonging to, for instance, the Kanji Club. Which might be you,” it said.

Niney cogitated for a minute, then reached inside her cache store for a chip belonging to an astrocomms research droid. It had the kind of high intelligence and grasp of mathematics that might help her search for the Canto Bight relay. Snorting this droid's chip carried some risk, though. Niney was aware that its last words to its human master before being abruptly terminated were, “Shut up and do as I say, meatbrick.” Niney planned to be be more circumspect.

Half an hour later, she told Kylo to start the engines. “I have created a search pattern and a way of sampling the signal from that ad relay that will zero us in on where it is,” she said. “Once we find it, I will make it give us its coordinates.” She flourished her slicing tools to illustrate. “Then we’ll know where we are, and we can use that to plot a course to Canto Bight.”

“What? Explain again,” said Kylo, starting out of some dark reverie of his own.

Niney tried, lapsing into binary because the physics was too complex for a protocol droid’s command of Basic.

“I have no idea what you just said,” said Kylo. “Start again from the beginning.”

“Shut up and drive, meatbrick,” said Niney, in binary.


	6. Deep Space Scavenging

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Rose have a quiet moment together
> 
>  
> 
> \- - -

Deep space scavenging was new to Rey, but the principle was the same. She sat in the co-pilot’s seat while Chewie feathered the Millennium Falcon’s thrusters to bring them slowly through the debris of a recent space battle. Rey held her breath, but his long familiarity with the ship really showed in delicate manoeuvres like these.

“There,” said Rey at last. “That cruiser. The starboard relief tanks look good.”

“I see it,” grunted Chewie. He sent the Falcon drifting closer to the black outline of a wreck floating in a glittering cloud of debris. It had been peeled open by explosive forces, but Rey had a practiced eye for picking out what might be useful still.

“I’ll suit up,” said Rey. A gaggle of porgs followed her out of the cockpit. They were insatiably curious and had an razor-sharp instinct for novelty. Rey wouldn’t put it past them to try and join her in a space walk.

“Don’t let them get in the airlock!” Chewie roared after her, raising a few tired smiles from the crowd in the crew lounge.

The Falcon’s engineering bay had a rack full of hoses and connectors for scavenging fuel, among other things. Rose, already half suited-up, was unhitching a brace of them. A few minutes later, after tipping the porgs out of a third pressure suit and chasing them out of the airlock, Rey and Rose were floating over to the wrecked cruiser, towing a fuel line behind them.

They clamped their magboots onto the mangled struts still hooped around the fuel tanks. Rose took small scannerl from her toolbelt and knocked it against the skin of the tank, bending over to check a reading.

“Empty.”

They unclamped and jetted over to the next tank. It still registered some pressure. Working together, Rose and Rey set up the device - one of Chewie’s constructions - that would bore into the tank without igniting it. They secured the fuel line into a collar, and started up the drill.

“Through now,” said Rose, flipping off the switch.

“Start the pump,” Rey said into her helmet mic. A moment later the fuel line thrashed slowly then went taut as it filled. Rose and Rey stood side by side on the cruiser’s skeleton, scanning the space around them.

Away from Finn, Rose was quiet, focussed on the engineering problems set by each wreck they approached. Rey found herself falling into an easy rhythm alongside her, hardly needing to speak as they pointed out problems and passed tools to each other. It felt good to be away from the crowded Falcon. The stars were glorious, and in the deep silence of space Rey could breathe freely, the suit’s canned air strangely fresh on her cheeks.

“That looks like the turret for a ventral canon off a destroyer.” Rose pointed at a jagged shape floating in the distance. “The missiles…”

“…carry their own propellant,” finished Rey. She called up Chewie and he confirmed they could convert the propellant for the missiles into fuel for the Falcon. He was an old hand at solving these challenges.

They jetted over to the cannon, Rey flailing a bit in the zero gravity. Rose’s laughter was not unkind. They attached their equipment and stood quietly alongside, letting the pump work.

“It’s good to see Finn happy,” said Rey tentatively, after a while.

Rose bent over to tighten a clamp that Rey believed was perfectly tight already. “He called your name as soon as he woke up in the medbay,” Rose said defensively. “Poe told me.”

“I know. He told me too,” said Rey.

A chunk of metal from the debris field spun lazily towards the back of Rose’s head. Rey caught it before it could connect, and held it up to catch the light of the nearest star. It was impossible to tell what it had been; a direct hit from a laser cannon had melted it and so it became a strange, sculptural object.

“Pretty,” said Rose.

“Not so pretty if it hit you in the head, I think.” Rey handed it over, and Rose admired its glossy, almost organic curves. “Finn would never forgive me.” Rose gave her a questioning look, and Rey went on.  “After we left Crait, he watched over you. All the time. He was so worried about you.”

“Poe told me,” said Rose.

“That gossip,” said Rey. They both laughed, and the tension between them was gone, just like that.

Poe, Finn and Rose. In the space of a week they’d become an inseparable unit. Rey usually found them sitting around the crew lounge table, arguing tactics and politics. Where to go next, what to do, how the Resistance could survive. Finn offering his assessments of what the First Order would do, how stormtroopers would respond. Poe weighing up probabilities based on his knowledge of galactic politics. Two strong men who bounced ideas off each other with verve and imagination. They both had charisma; people would follow them.

Rose spoke least, but when she did, Poe and Finn listened. Her mind was not only analytical around machines; she brought the same clarity to Poe and Finn’s plans and tempered them with humanity.

Leia generally sat nearby, a silent listener unless one of the others appealed to her for information. _Was the alliance with Chandrila still in effect? How strong was the majority opposition on Warlentta? Did Kashyyk still have some of the old Republic cruisers on standby?_

Occasionally Leia’s dark eyes would flick up to catch Rey’s glance. A brief look, but loaded. _Listen, did you catch that? That was important_.

Rey would be welcome to join them around that table, she knew. In one of her gun well conversations with Leia she’d tried to explain, haltingly, why she didn’t. Politics, diplomacy, the thought of so many eyes on her, people waiting on her decisions. Once they landed on an inhabited planet, it would only get worse.

“You’re a symbol to them, Rey. People would follow you.” Leia’s look had been probing.

“Politics isn’t my thing,” said Rey miserably. She'd been curled once again in the transparisteel blister of the gun well while Leia sat in the gunner’s seat.

For an instant, she was aware of another presence in the crowded space. A dark voice, sizzling with anger. _Talk talk talk! Just like the Republic has always done. None of it ever did any good. If you want to change things, you have to act!_

Then the presence was gone. But from the hitch in Leia’s breath, Rey knew she’d sensed it too.

“He never did have any patience for politics,” said Leia drily. “That should make his term as Supreme Leader interesting.”

“I don’t think he’s with the First Order any more,” said Rey, her voice tentative. Her chin rested on her fists as she probed gingerly at her memories of the Force bond. “I wasn’t really aware of it when…when we last spoke. But remembering it now, I believe he was alone.”

“Is that so?” said Leia, sitting up suddenly. Rey had seen how her mind clicked over, fast as a gambler’s, assessing Rey’s words: what they could mean, what Kylo might do, what the First Order had done. Gnawing miserably at her knuckles, Rey had watched her. She could never be like Leia, who shuffled the cards of each new hand with such sure instincts.

The memory troubled her now as she floated among the stars, tethered to the fuel tank they were draining. Where _was_ Kylo? It mattered a great deal to know. The First Order had gone dark since Crait. That uncanny ability to operate undercover had always been one of their strengths, and they hadn’t lost it now. Though the galaxy was alive with rumours, nothing that reached the Falcon’s scanners told them where the First Order’s central command were or what they were doing.

_Ben, where are you?_

He was there, somewhere in a rush of stars, of blue light. Lightspeed, maybe. Angry, still. And a little more desperate.

_Where are you?_

_I’m with you,_ he said. His voice was low, a husky whisper that brushed her ears. The strange intimacy of it, here in the cold of space, made her hairs stand on end. She shivered, but it was heat she felt: a slow flush rolling through her body.

 _Where are you?_ she asked again.

_You’ll see. And when you do, you’ll be sorry you threw away your chance._

He didn’t want her to know where he was.

Chewie’s voice crackled on Rey’s headset. “Come in. We’re full.”

Rey turned to look back at the Millennium Falcon, floating above her like a ghost in the starlight. She felt a flash of envy and longing from Kylo, then he was gone. All anger and injured pride, and unquestionably Kylo, not Ben.

Unlike him, Rey was among friends. There they were, waving through the lighted viewports. Why then did she feel so alone? A million stars lighted the galaxy, but she was only aware of one. Some dark star, distant, falling fast through empty space. Pulling her into its gravity as it fell. She wanted to let go, to let it take her down into the darkness.

Rose jolted Rey out of her reverie with a nudge of her elbow. “Hey stargazer. Let’s finish up here.” Together they unclamped the drill unit and jetted the fuel lines back to the Falcon, Rose guiding Rey with her free hand. “No offence, but it’s quicker than you trying to steer yourself, and my feet are freezing in this suit.” She flashed a grin at Rey, but she could only nod in response.

Poe and Finn were waiting inside the airlock. As Rey and Rose climbed out of their suits, Finn told them, “We thought Warlentta. Officially they’re claiming neutrality but our contacts there say public sentiment is on the Resistance side.”

Rey could see that same calculating look in Rose’s eyes that Leia so often had. Weighing up the probabilities of politics and human nature. Rey was not part of this conversation.

Rose nodded. “Yes. I think Warlentta too.”

Poe punched the air happily. “We’re all agreed then! Let’s go!”

Rey sighed and watched them head off towards the cockpit.

A porg was making faces at her through the helmet of her suit, and she had to tip it out before hanging the suit up on its rack. Tiredly, she shook out all the other suits too, just in case. Chewie was irrationally protective about the creatures and the last thing Rey needed was another ruckus over a missing porg.

Warlentta. She didn’t know a thing about it. Maybe she could ask Leia.

Under Rey’s feet, the deck thrummed as the engines warmed up. There was a slight judder as the Falcon entered lightspeed. Rey’s heart sank like a stone, every instinct crying out that she was going in the wrong direction.


	7. Rolling at Canto Bight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo learns the hard way that there's more than one kind of cheating
> 
> \- - -

Kylo and Niney followed a beacon down to the spacious landing field outside the Casino. The Novasword flopped down among the sleek and graceful yachts of the galaxy’s finest like a dead bird on a dessert trolley.

“Your landing fees…” began the control tower.

“Are paid,” said Kylo, concentrating hard on the person behind the voice. “See to it that you adjust your records.”

“Yes sir.”

After that it was just a matter of following the signs to the Casino, and a touch of the Force to get him through the front door. The uniformed guards and bouncers glanced at him and looked away, bored. Nothing unusual about the tall young man in the vaguely military-looking black tunic, they decided.

The droid though….nobody brought an astromech droid to the Casino. Well, apart from those troublemakers last week! Kylo leaned into their minds a little and helped them decide that astromech droids were the latest fad among the rich and famous.

An hour later, Kylo and Niney were in the room where the high rollers played. It was a sumptuous fantasy of gold and marble. A diverse crowd stood shoulder to shoulder, eyeing the wealth and the gamblers who played for it. Kylo overtopped most of them but even so he was close to being overwhelmed. The polite, affected chatter of the galaxy’s wealthiest citizens blended into low roar around him, punctuated by bursts of laughter and shrieks of excitement from the gaming tables. The competing scents of expensive perfume went to his head - were designed to do that, actually - and underneath it all there ran a current of music, cool and sophisticated. The very soundtrack of greed.

“So much money!” said Kylo, leaning on the Hazard Toss table. That was certainly true; piles of aureis and peggats shone in gleaming stacks.

A tall, angular woman in a shiny silk sheath laughed up at him, arching her back so her breasts pushed against him. “So much money? So much _sex!”_ she said, with another tinkling laugh. She was right, too. Kylo had never seen so many women in fabulous gowns that hinted at, or coyly revealed, or blatantly screamed about their physical assets. Hair teased up into unbelievable towers or looped into shining coils, with headdresses, tiaras, bracelets that chimed elegantly on slender wrists or shrivelled claws, faces painted to enthral or amaze or terrify.

The woman beside him somehow ended up with her leg between his, and he didn’t think it was just the press of the crowd that pushed her against him like that.

“So much sex!” she repeated. Kylo laughed a country bumpkin belly-laugh. From the moment he’d walked into the Casino he’d taken on the role of the gawky innocent lunkhead from the Outer Rim. Just a big boy out for a good time, wowed by all the wealth and beauty around him. And women like this one were buying his act. She was rich, bored, and dripping with wealth. All he needed was to get her to advance him some money so he could get in on one of these games.

He’d chosen Hazard Toss because it seemed like the easiest one to influence with the Force. Now he stood, watching some tufty-eared character face off against a squat and angry-looking person in an electric blue dress that turned her into a wobbly tower of frills. For the moment, Kylo had no money so he could only practice how he was going to cheat. He randomly chose Tufty Ears and tried to make the dice go in his favour. It was difficult. The dice were small and rounded, and while it was easy enough to guide how they landed, it was nearly impossible to sense through the Force which side was the winning face. Kylo had to project a general sense of “winningness”, which was tricky. But he’d been working on it for over an hour and he was definitely improving.

Things were coming to a head. The crowd leaned over the table and a tense silence fell. Tufty Ears threw his final toss. Kylo concentrated. Six, six needed to land…he _could_ and he _couldn’t_ feel it. _Six_. His lips drew back in a snarl of effort.

“Six!” shouted the croupier, and the crowd erupted into cheers. Blue Dress hadn’t won many fans with her haughty manner, and most of the spectators were clapping Tufty Ears on the back and congratulating him. The croupier shoved the piles of coins at him. Tufty Ears gestured to a heavily armoured droid standing behind him, who took the money and stowed it in a safe in its midriff.

The woman laid a jewelled hand on Kylo’s arm and tilted her face up to his. “Wouldn’t you like to play?” Her lips were brightly painted, and her mouth seemed to move in slow motion around the words.

“Oh, I just enjoy watching,” said Kylo. “Besides, I haven’t really got any money.” He gave her the same frank and guileless look he’d seen his father employ countless times, back when Ben Solo had been welcome on his father’s  adventures. It was a little disturbing how easily Kylo’s face fell into those lines, but he didn’t have time to think of that now.

The woman looked him up and down. Now the crowd had eased away, she could get a better view. He was wearing the same clothes in which he’d fled from the Finalizer, his black tunic unwashed and shabby-looking among the splendid costumes of the Casino. But he had something most of the men here lacked. All their fine tailoring couldn’t hide their soft, slouching bodies, their rounded shoulders, their sagging skin. Kylo was a head taller than most other humans in the Casino, and when he’d sauntered into high-stakes salon, some of the idle watchers, startled at first by his rough appearance, found their gaze lingering on the breadth of his shoulders, the swell of muscles on his arms. Like this woman here.

“I could lend you some money,” she said, her breath in his ear. “Just to get you started.” She took him by the elbow and led him to the head of the table. “Come on, I’ll show you how. It’ll be fun. My name’s Tuaua, by the way.”

And fun it was. Tuaua introduced him to the croupier. “Show this young man a good time.” There was a murmur of interest from the watchers, and the croupier bent and kissed her hand. Tuaua showed Kylo how to arrange the stack of aureis she gave him around the hazards marked on the table; the other seven players chose their spots too. One by one they took turns pitching the dice, and the stacks of gold shifted like the tides from one zone to another. Kylo pitched last, and as he did so he felt the Force seize his dice. There was an appreciative “oooooh” from the crowd, and Tuaua leaned into him to breathe a husky “Well done!” into his ear.

Snoke used to say that nothing should be left to chance. “It’s the planning, my boy, that makes the victory. You play the long game, you assemble your forces, and only when you have every piece locked down, do you strike a blow so decisive that your enemies will have nothing to counter with.” How ironic he'd died the way he had…Kylo’s mouth stretched in a long, toothy grin.

The uncertainty was intoxicating; he loved the way the dice danced lightly across the table, the way his chest tightened as they spun and hesitated before falling into place.  “Win!” he hissed under his breath, just like everyone else. But the dice would answer to him. He knew it. Not every time, but often enough. Of course he couldn’t lose, not really. One by one the other players dropped out until it was just him and Tufty Ears. After a long series of pitches, where the luck swung this way and that, Tufty Ears’ familiarity with the game trumped Kylo’s cheating dice enough put him ahead at the finish. But Kylo was left with plenty to stake on another game.

“I knew it! As soon as you walked in, I said to myself, ‘It’s my lucky day’,” said Tuaua. She pressed a drink into his hand and toasted him with her own.

Kylo played on. He wasn’t insanely lucky, not enough to arouse suspicion. But he was making more than he was losing. Tuaua squealed with excitement when he won, hugging him one-handed around his waist, then letting her hand drift down to his hip, holding his arm confidentially. For some reason the touch brought back an unwelcome memory; a moment in Snoke’s throne room, when Rey’s hand had touched his arm just so, for a fleeting instant. Or…had she actually grabbed his thigh?

A shiver of desire ran through his body. Hateful weakness. Like the weakness that had made him reach out to speak to her while they were both in space…

But why shouldn’t he feel desire? There were a dozen women in this room more beautiful than Rey, and they all wanted him. Sophisticated, aristocratic women, the kind who were fit to hang on the arm of the First Order’s high command. Not like Rey. He could only imagine her prowling around here with her fist resting on her lightsaber, judgemental and envious, spouting Jedi platitudes. She’d be no fun at all.

“Do you mind getting me a drink?” Tuaua asked, between rounds of Hazard Toss. “Felucian dreamwine, please.” Kylo smiled and went to the bar. He took his time, listening to snatches of conversation as he waited to order. He’d always told himself he was above gossip, but this was different. The idle chatter of the very rich had a frightening weight behind it. In the corridors of power, a pointed joke opened some doors and closed others. The laughter of a tyrant  spelled somebody’s death.

Kylo’s meetings with the First Order High Command had often left him feeling excluded. There were hidden undercurrents, things everyone else knew. As though they’d all secretly agreed that certain names, certain phrases, had other meanings. Now, watching the galaxy’s wealthiest citizens at play, he understood. Hux and his ilk came from these people. Snoke had painted the First Order’s aims as noble ones, but these were the people it served. Greedy, vicious and idle, and so secure in their wealth.

Tuaua welcomed him back to the Hazard Toss table with a kiss he didn’t try very hard to dodge. “How are your little aureis doing? Let’s see if we can’t grow them a little more,” she said. Kylo played another round, coming out considerably ahead of the Corellian magnate who was pitted against him at the end.

“That deserves another drink. Get me one, sweetie, and try one yourself,” Tuaua urged. Again Kylo went to the bar. Watching the people moving around him, he imagined invisible lines of power and influence stretching between them. Maybe it was the effect of too much alcohol, but he wondered whether there was more than one kind of Force.

The third time he went for drinks, he found himself next to a short, freckly woman with an engaging smile. She was quite plainly dressed. She put a hand on his arm as he was paying for his drink. “You’re new here, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Uh, yes,” he said, and started to turn away. But she hadn’t let go of him. “Be careful,” the woman said urgently. “Girls like Tuaua, they’re only after one thing.”

“I might be after the same thing,” said Kylo impatiently. Tuaua was flickering her fingers at him and smiling across the throng by the Hazard Toss table. Another game was about to start.

“Don’t be a fool. She’ll get you loved up and drugged up and then she’ll skin you alive. She’s always on the lookout for a rube like you.”

By the fourth drink, Kylo believed her. Tuaua’s roaming hands were becoming irritating, and she seemed to have a remarkable ability to conjure all kinds of substances out of thin air. “Ooh, my friend Petitia gave me some of this yesterday, I forgot I had it in my bag.” She opened a tiny jewelled case that hung from a chain around her waist. “Let’s try it. It’s meant to be so much better than glitterstim.” He took a mild sniff to humour her, but noticed that she barely took any. Five minutes later another friend sent over a bottle of a dull violet liqueur. “I missed his birthday, and he thinks I’m mad with him…Do you know, this stuff is worth 250 aureis for a bottle? He’ll have to try harder than that though.” She tossed back a slug and handed him the bottle. “Drink it. It’s pure wealth in a bottle,” she sighed. Her eyes seemed to grow to the size of saucers, and he didn’t like the predatory gleam he saw in them.

Kylo staggered away from the gaming table, claiming he needed the refresher. It was the only thing he could think of to get away from Tuaua. He’d won enough money for the time being; maybe it’d be better to disappear and come back tomorrow. He looked around for Niney. She was parked under a table nearby holding somebody’s drink.

A small freckled hand tugged at his elbow. It was the girl he’d met before. “Had enough?”

“I think so. Thanks for the warning.”

Across the floor, Tuaua caught his eye. She saw Kylo’s new companion and pulled a sour face. Kylo smiled mechanically, but she turned away with an overdramatic flounce to lean towards a big white-furred creature that was trying to get her attention.

“Don’t go yet. I’ll show you how the Casino really works,” said the girl next to him, flashing him a grin.

A little befuddled, he followed his bright and bouncy new friend while she told him about the Casino. She had gossip about everyone. He wasn’t entirely surprised when she confessed that she wasn’t a rich debutante or a countess. “I’m the Countess of Sfazia’s maid. Teezia’s my name. She hates the Casino, and only comes here because of her husband’s business. She thinks it’s a great lark to loan me one of her dresses!” Kylo couldn’t help joining in her laughter.

Teezia knew the tricks and pitfalls of all the gambling tables, too. Somehow he ended up having a drink with her, then another, then they joined in a few low-stakes games with some friendly people, he won a little money, and then some more, then everyone was cheering because he won a whole lot, and then he was tired and Teezia helped him book a room in one of the Casino’s plush hotels.

Then he woke up kneeling on the floor of the refresher…no, it was a real bathroom, complete with a gold plated bath. He’d ended up with his cheek resting on its cold rim, and there was vomit everywhere. The room spun as he tried to stand up. He was naked, and he had a vague memory of having…what had he done? His clothes were scattered on the rich carpet of the bedroom. There was no sign of any money anywhere. Panicked, he shook out his wide belt. It felt horribly light. He clutched at the loop where his lightsaber usually hung. But it was gone too.

He felt a roar of rage building up from deep inside him, but even the act of taking a breath made his stomach heave. All he could manage was a groan. He sank down on the bed, holding his head. A cloying smell of perfume turned his stomach.

There came the sound of knocking on the door, adding to the thumping of his own headache. Kylo went to put his head under a cold faucet so he couldn’t hear it. That was when he discovered there was even vomit in his hair.

Somebody forced open the door. Kylo fumbled a towel around himself and stepped out of the bathroom to confront a liveried servant.

“Check out time was five hours ago, sir. Will you be paying for another night by cash?”

“No,” snarled Kylo. “Get out. I’ll leave when I’m dressed.”

“Very well. And please remove your droid. We don’t allow their kind.” The man bowed and left with an offended sniff.

Kylo found Niney waiting outside. He imagined he could see silent reproach in those glowing red sensors, though she didn’t say anything. She led him through the corridors towards the lobby. Outside, blazing sunlight struck the stone facades of the old buildings, hurting Kylo’s eyes. A few people conducted their business quietly in the shady porticos. It must be mid-afternoon at least.

“Did you see who took my lightsaber?” Kylo asked, trudging beside Niney.

“The tall skinny one you met first,” said Niney. “She threatened to cut me in half and locked me in a linen cupboard.”

Kylo stopped. “I’m sure I still had it at the end of the night.” In fact he had a dim memory of playing some stupid game with it in the hotel room. Spin the lightsaber?

“I set off a smoke alarm and escaped when somebody came to investigate, thank you for asking,” said Niney.

Kylo ignored her. He’d just been king-hit by a memory. The bed, the smell of perfume…”I went to the hotel room with Teezia, not Tuaua,” he said. “But it smelt of Tuaua’s perfume.”

“Those two women were working together,” said Niney.

A  clot of rage  seemed to claw its way up from Kylo’s stomach, forcing him to lean on the nearest wall while his stomach heaved again and again. It was along time before he could speak again. “Of all the worthless fools....!” He reached for his lightsaber. But of course it wasn’t there. He punched the wall instead, again and again, muttering,“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” in time with each blow. The wall was marked with blood, but still the pain wasn’t enough. Snoke would have punished him worse, Snoke would have hurt him until he passed out...

Niney snapped him out of it with an electrical jolt to the backs of his knees that made him stagger, his legs almost giving way. “Have you finished?” she asked.

Kylo stood, shoulders hunched, his chest heaving. Niney faced his wild glare, rocking warily.

At last Kylo straightened up. He flexed his bloodied hands and looked at them with disgust. “Tonight, we’ll try again,” he said.

They made their way back to the ship in silence. At least nobody had stolen that.


	8. A Message to the Galaxy

Kylo’s fight with Luke made for hard viewing.

Rey stood in the crew lounge of the Falcon, hands over her mouth, watching the scene replay over and over again on the holoplayer. Kylo looked absolutely out of his mind, his face a mask of teeth and slitted eyes. He was shaking with fury, scarcely able to contain the violence of every gesture. Stomping his feet down into extravagantly wide stances, long arms arms lashing out as though to strew death from his clenched fists.

It shook Rey to see Luke apologise to Kylo with that strange mixture of humility and self-confidence she’d never been able to fathom. The depth of hatred in Kylo’s reply was bone-chilling. Luke’s pain was genuine, and so was Kylo’s. Yet, despite the sorrow and regret in Luke’s voice, he kept his detachment. He was an adult pitted against an angry, overgrown child. And a trickster, stoking Kylo’s rage. It was disturbing how masterfully Luke played on his insecurities.

Then, the mesmerising, brutal physicality and grace of their combat made her heart rise with a strange mixture of fear and elation every time. She’d fought _against_ that and _with_ that…

It was hard to believe.

The ground, churned to red under the concentrated firepower of the First Order, drifted white again with the faint, constant mineral snow of Crait. Rey caught the moment when Luke scraped his feet across that white, making no mark, while Kylo gouged bloody tracks in his fury. Kylo looked so half-formed and chaotic next to Luke, who stood calmly burning his life out like a candle to bring off a victory that only a great master could accomplish.

It made her heart hurt. Luke had been so much greater than she knew. What a guide, what an ally he could have been! But he’d turned away from the first moment he saw her, first with contempt, then with fear. What words, what gestures, could have won him over? How could she have opened the doors he kept slamming in her face? She’d been given a chance to learn miracles, and somehow she’d squandered it.

And so had Ben. Luke had accepted him as a pupil. He could have learned so much, been so much. Instead he’d become Kylo Ren.

“Stop there,” said Poe, and Lieutenant Connix, who was running the holoplayer, paused the scene. “Cut to the shot of the Falcon’s shadow going over…”

“But that happened before…” began Rose.

“Yes, but we’re telling a story here. The Falcon, then we cut to Rey…”

“Not me!” said Rey quickly.

“Leia, then,” said Poe.

“I haven’t done my speech yet,” said Leia, watching silently in the background. She was mostly quiet, since Crait. Though Rey found herself seeking out the contact Leia did allow: a simple squeeze of her hand, a nod, or just an understanding look.

“We’ll drop your speech in later. I still have to do mine,” said Finn. “Did we decide which one we’re going with? I’d like to start with, ‘Some of you knew me as FN-2187. But I have another name now.’ Or should I do the ‘some of us look like this,’ speech?”

“And some of us could look like _you!”_ quoted Rose, levelling a finger at an imaginary holocam. She broke her dramatic pose to smile fondly at Finn and he returned her a warm look, full of gravity and pride. In that moment, Rey had no doubt that when Finn took his turn on the holoscreen, he would look every bit the hero that Rose saw.

The Resistance hadn’t flown straight to Warlentta. Finn and Leia had cooked up a plan to make a holocast of the events on Crait. Rey and Rose had found a nearly intact X-wing on one of their salvage missions - its pilot dead by sheer awful luck in a largely undamaged ship - and Poe had flown it back to Crait to pick up sensor logs and footage from surveillance bots embedded in the facility.

Connix replayed the scene from a different data cube, and Rey watched the fight again. She’d been flying the Falcon at the time, drawing off the First Order’s tie fighters. She’d been aware of the Force stretched taut around her, wild and potent beyond anything she’d ever sensed before. Now she knew that her frenzied dogfight through Crait’s mines hadn’t been the only thing disturbing the Force. There’d been Kylo, seizing on it with furious intent, Luke making his impossibly powerful projection, and the mad battle between them that she watched now.

Something must have showed on Rey’s face, for Rose touched her gently on the arm. “Even knowing Luke’s not really there, it’s frightening seeing Kylo go for him like that, isn’t it?”

 _How much worse for Leia, watching this? Her brother, her son_. But Leia was harder to talk to, and she remained silent, though Rey felt the weight of her gaze. Rey shook her head. “It’s weird. Seeing them, knowing I fought Kylo too but…not like that.”

“Like what?” asked Rose.

“Like he wanted me to die. I don’t think he really…he didn’t mean to…”

A subtle change came over Rose’s face, and beside her Finn seemed to tense as well. Rey had dodged this one topic often enough for them to realise she was avoiding it.

“I can’t say,” finished Rey.

Leia broke in then. “You have to say. You have to talk. Don’t do what they both did, wrapping themselves up in their sorrows and hiding themselves away in silence. Luke should have talked to me instead of disappearing. Ben should have told me when Snoke came to him.”

Poe gave Leia a look that was not exactly accusing, but something close. Heavy with shared history. Leia sighed and shook her head. “Yes, Poe. I should have been there to listen. Maybe I wasn’t there when they needed me. But Rey, I’m here now.” She patted the bench beside her, and Rey stopped hovering miserably over the holoscreen and sat down.

“Look at him. All that power. He could have been on our side, fighting for us. The Force showed me Kylo would turn to the Light. I believed it!” Rey’s fists were clenched in unconscious imitation of Kylo, still visible on the screen. “Would the Force lie to me? Or did I mess up so badly? Like I messed up with Luke…” Rey’s eyes prickled with tears.

“You didn’t mess up with Luke. That’s all on him,” said Leia in her quiet, dry-leaf voice.

“I’m sorry,” mumbled Rey. “I thought he’d come back with me, but I must have done something wrong. He barely spoke to me. I begged him to teach me, but we ended up fighting.”

There was an uneasy shuffle of feet around her. Poe leaned past Connix to pause the holoplayer.

Rose broke the awkward silence. “Well, you killed Snoke. That’s something.”.

“No, Ben did that. Kylo. I was sure then that he’d turn to our side. I must have been crazy.”

“He’s the crazy one. Look at him!” said Finn, gesturing at the holo, where Kylo was frozen in an expression hardly human in its savagery.

“That’s one ugly cuss,” said Poe darkly. “Hates everyone and everything.”

“There’s something _wrong_ with me!” Rey interrupted. “I was such a fool to think he’d turn because _I_ wanted him to.”

“He’s an idiot,” said Finn, then did a double take at Rey. “What do you mean, turn for you? I thought Luke sent you to defeat him.”

“No, it was my idea to go. I had a vision…” Rey didn’t know where to look in the circle of faces surrounding her. She had Leia’s sympathy, but the others? There hadn’t been time to tell them her story.

“Maybe Force visions are only possible futures. Otherwise nobody would have any free will,” said Finn, whose conversation often returned to the same topic: What did freedom look like?

“But it wasn’t just the vision. It was how Ben talked to me. Kylo. Like he would... like he wanted...” But Rey couldn’t finish. The idea that Rey from Jakku could matter to Kylo seemed like the height of arrogance.

“Ben or Kylo?” said Rose. “You keep changing names.”

“Sometimes he’s one, sometimes he’s the other,” said Rey helplessly. “They’re not the same.”

“When did he talk to you?” said Rose curiously, looking at the heat mounting to Rey’s ears. “I thought you just fought.”

Rey’s spine curled under the circle of eyes spearing her with their stares. “No, there’s another thing with the Force. Like a connection. He talks, I talk, we can see each other. Like on a holoimager, only I can pick up his feelings too. It’s...not something either of us controls.” She threw Finn an appealing look. “Remember what I said on Starkiller Base when you came to rescue me? How I didn’t understand what had happened, and you wouldn’t believe it?”

Finn leaned away, frowning. “What do you talk about?”

“I don’t want to say,” Rey whispered. “It doesn’t matter.”

Poe broke in angrily. “What else can he see when you do your Force chats? Can he see where we are?”

“No...I...no I don’t think so.”

“Come on,” broke in Leia. “Let’s finish what we’re doing here.” She gestured at the holoplayer.

Connix rewound the scene, fiddled with the audio gain. Everybody leaned in, listening to Kylo spew bitterness.

“Look all those teeth,” said Poe, and Finn gave a derisive laugh.

Rey flinched, but Leia acted as though she hadn’t heard them. Her glance was for Rey alone as she said sadly, “There’s so much hurt between them, it’s hard to look at.”

“And Luke,” said Rey, shaking her head in horrified fascination. “The way he brings up all Kylo’s anger, so he vomits it out.”

“You have to lance a boil, to cure it,” said Leia.

“It’s horrible, because he’s so accurate. Every word he says lays Ben wide open,” said Rey. “I know him. Kylo. Ben. Better than I know Luke, because Luke would never open up to me,” said Rey. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Poe grimace. No sympathy there. She focused on Leia and continued determinedly. “It’s like I’m tied to him. It hurts.”

 _I’m haltered,_ she wanted to say, like the beasts the teedos rode on Jakku. Rey had watched their dumb suffering, and thought her servitude to Unkar Plutt was little different. But her soul had been hers. Self-made, even if it was hammered out of junk. Free to soar on the morning wind over the desert.

But not any more. She was brought up short on the end of this long rein that bound her to Kylo, that yanked her out of her course, tied her tongue, tripped her feet, wound about her thoughts. Exactly what he was doing at the moment, she didn’t know, but he was still so _angry._

“We have to keep talking,” said Leia. “That’s what we’re doing now. Luke’s sacrifice means nothing if the galaxy doesn’t know about it.”

And so they went on, cobbling together a message that that would, they hoped, go out to the galaxy.

Rey sat back to watch them work. As they leaned around the imager, a gap opened around Rey. Every shoulder was turned to her, shutting her out. A hot prickle stung her eyes then subsided, to be replaced by a small, sour coal of heat in her gut. _I’ve said the wrong things again_. She looked to Leia for support, but Leia was too busy with the holorecorder. In Leia, the Force helped draw people to her. It seemed to do the opposite for Rey.

 _Ben would understand._ The thought came unbidden. Surprising her with its bitter truth.

Now Leia was directing the holocast, weaving together the images they’d chosen. The Resistance’s last stand. Rey and Chewie’s heroic arrival in the nick of time to draw off the tie fighters. Luke’s tremendous final battle. Their escape. Luke’s ringing words, “I will not be the last Jedi.” Then Finn, with a particular message of rebellion aimed at the stormtroopers of the galaxy. Rey saw how the imager loved his face, transforming its rich, dark curves into something noble and handsome. Everyone in the crew lounge turned to watch.

And finally Leia, regal and determined, speaking to the galaxy at large. “I don’t know how many times the Empire and the First Order thought they’d made an end of me. Here I am, still, after all these years, while Snoke lies dead, killed by his own apprentice. This is not chance, these are not coincidences, but the will of the Force. I’m clearly not dead, much as General Hux might wish it. No, the Resistance is alive. Join us.”

Connix zoomed in on a screen behind Leia. It was tuned to the Holonet and showed the current date and headlines, confirming Leia’s survival past the destruction of the _Raddus._ She held up a hand and made a chopping gesture. “And fade out,” she murmured.

Everyone applauded. Behind them, Rey let out a long breath, releasing tension she didn’t know she’d held. Would those images of Kylo, wild-eyed and furious, be the last time she saw him? She leaned back in her chair and for an instant she imagined that phantom arms encircled her. Warmth and strength enfolding her such as she’d never felt in real life. She froze, afraid to lose the sensation, yet also afraid it would develop into a Force sending right here in front of everyone. But it faded. She drew up her knees and hugged herself with her own insufficient arms.

\- - -

By the time the Resistance’s message was edited together, the Falcon had arrived at Warlentta, the home world of Commander D’Acy. Leia’s idea, really, though she’d let the others arrive at it on their own, saying only, “Our days of lurking in the Outer Rim are over. We can’t influence anyone unless we’re in the thick of things.” So here they were, approaching a settled, civilised world. That was a novelty for many of them, Rey most of all. She pushed her way into the cockpit for a look. Commander D’Acy was already there, sitting in the copilot seat next to Chewie. Rose stood at D’acy’s elbow, adjusting a spindly pile of electronics bolted to the nav console: a stealth shield she’d cobbled together. She had two porgs on each arm, bobbing happily along to her movements. Rey picked them up and placed them firmly on the non-functional compressor. “Sit there, squawkballs. Let the girl work.”

Rose and Rey had gone over the Falcon with a fine toothed comb, removing anything that could track them. (To their outrage, they’d found no less than four trackers stuck to the hull, one dating back to Empire days.) Now they needed Rose’s cloaking device, for Warlentta’s political situation, close to an election, made it imperative that they arrive undetected.

“My family will be surprised to see us,” said D’Acy.

“Can’t you call ahead?” asked Rey.

“It’s not safe. I haven’t got any of their current cipher codes.”

D’Acy had been gravely injured on Crait and this was her first day out of her bunk. Looking down at the blue planet below them, she surprised Rey with the first smile she’d seen: vulpine, with her sharp teeth and long nose, but somehow kind. “There’s no place like home,” D’Acy said. Her eyes filled briefly with tears.

Chewie nodded his agreement, then asked for directions to D’Acy’s family’s estate. D’Acy worked the navcomp, and the ship glided down. Rose crooned encouraging words to her cloaking device. The ‘ping’ of planetary surveillance beams made them all jump, and Chewie kept an anxious eye on the screens showing Warlentta’s military satellites. Several times a patrol vessel seemed to turn in response to their passage. “Go to sleep, you don’t see us, we’re not here!” sang Rose, hands flying over her controls.

Rey watched too, and felt the Force gather like a cloak around them. “We’re just a little glitch in your sensors, you can ignore us,” she muttered. Perhaps it helped, for soon they were watching a continent grow beneath them as they flew down unchallenged. Green, like Takodana, though as they dropped lower Rey could see it was more mountainous. They glided down at last into a broad valley, an island of fields and orchards among forested hills.

“There!” said D’Acy, pointing to an airfield. It stood behind a cluster of buildings dominated by a big white house with rows of windows and a turret at each corner. A substantial home indeed.

Five or six other ships and quadjumpers rested there already, some of them old and semi-dismantled. “Our family once had a bit of a fleet. Not much left of it now, but the Falcon will blend right in.” She pointed to a tall mast at the edge of the airfield. “That’s how we’ll get our message out. We just need to get enough power to hook into the Holonet.”

Chewie set the Falcon down with a soft sigh of its thrusters, and tipped his head modestly to the wildly applauding porgs. They were plastered to every viewport.

Leia came slowly into the cockpit and looked around. “Let’s see what kind of welcome we get.”

The cockpit lights flickered and went out. Chewie mashed the controls with his big hairy fists, but nothing happened.

Finn burst into the already-crowded cabin and exchanged a panicked look with Rey. “That sounds like…”

“Somebody’s overriden our controls,” finished Rey.

“Again!” said Finn. He slapped the wall with one hand, making the porgs jump.

From the co-pilot’s seat, D’Acy was flicking switches on the comms unit, to no avail. “Yes, I remember my father telling me...a lot of the big estates do this now, if they have a landing field. You can’t be too careful these days…” But she sounded worried. Rey followed her glance outside and saw that the turrets on the big house were not just ornamental. The muzzles of some kind of cannons were just visible inside, and they were trained on the airfield.

The doors to the house opened and a double file of armoured guards appeared, jogging down the steps holding long blasters.

“Commander, go out and tell them who we are,” said Leia.

D’Acy tensed, leaning suddenly into the transparisteel for a better view of the soldiers. “That armour they’re wearing…” Her voice dropped as though the breath had gone out of her. “That’s not our family crest.”

Leia looked around the silent cabin, perhaps weighing up its defensive possibilities. Rey reached for her lightsaber but Leia gave a tiny shake of her head. Nobody would survive a last stand in the cramped quarters of the Millennium Falcon, no matter how well they fought. Leia sighed and squared her shoulders. “Well. It doesn’t look like we have much choice. We’re outnumbered and they have their cannons pointed at us.”

She led the way to the exit hatch, and the others followed in silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * * *  
> I heard the news that Ursula Le Guin died yesterday. RIP, great lady. She was an inspiration to me as she was to so many others. As a writer, her imagination was radical and subversive, her use of language as powerful and concise as the best poetry. As a person, she was equally radical; a feminist, an activist, an ally to people of colour, a champion of the underdog, and a clear thinker with a moral compass that shone through her words and her life. Her voice will be sorely missed.


	9. A Lost Lightsaber

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Niney looks forward to a bit of mayhem as Kylo searches Canto Bight for his stolen lightsaber
> 
> \- - -

After tossing some ship’s rations down his throat, Kylo was ready to overturn Canto Bight looking for the lightsaber. He started with the spaceport, since he was there already, and Niney whirled along at his heels, twirling her sensors with excitement. She was keen to see how he’d take on Canto Bight’s transit bureaucracy. One after another, Kylo had them bailed up against the walls of their dingy offices, sweating as they tried to recall who might have left in a hurry. There would come a point in every interview when Kylo, looming over them, would reach towards their faces with one hand. Their eyes would glaze over and they would stop sputtering about “passenger confidentiality” and “maintaining our reputation for discretion”.

“Two young women? Human women? Tuaua and Teezia, you say? They’d be flying the _Pretty Thing,_ ” gasped a grey-faced port guard. “It’s gone.”

Niney waited for Kylo to hurl the man across the room. Kylo merely let out his breath in a hard rush of frustration. “Forget I asked. Nice to meet you,” he said flatly, lowering his hand.

“The pleasure’s all mine,” said the guard, coming to himself. He tried a puzzled smile on Kylo and Niney. Kylo stretched his mouth into an unconvincing curve of fake goodwill.

Niney skated after Kylo to the control tower, where they found only one person, a dusty-looking Twi’lek, surrounded by screens in the top room.

“The _Pretty Thing?_ That left early this morning,” said the Twi’lek traffic controller, sliding around with his back against the control tower’s transparisteel windows to avoid Kylo.

Niney rolled after them, scooting around the chairs knocked over by the scuffle. “Waste him!” she suggested.

Kylo leaned in closer, red-eyed and twitching with effort. “Where’d they go?” he growled.

The Twi’lek’s lekku swung free of his collar as he leaned away. Niney extended a claw, hoping to give them a good yank.

“I don’t _know_ where they went!” the man said with a gasp. “Talk to Paw Paw Teng. The Gungan mechanic. They kept it in his shed. He knows them.”

Kylo lowered his hand and gave him a humourless grin. “A pleasure to do business with you,” he said. “You’ll forget what we talked about.”

“A pleasure to meet you,” said the traffic controller, his eyes coming slowly unglazed. “Call again soon.”

Paw Paw Teng operated out of a shed behind a ship-grooming facility. Niney would rather have watched modern pleasure yachts being replated with aurodium and kitted out with the latest bling, but Kylo didn’t share her interest, so she followed him to the crammed junkyard of spare parts on the other side. Paw Paw Teng was only visible as a pair of leathery feet sticking out of the rear thrusters of a racing skiff. There was a shower of sparks from somewhere inside the thruster vents, and a burst of musically-inflected Gungan cursing. Kylo grabbed Teng by his heels and hauled him out to tumble onto the blackened duracrete.

“Teezia and Tuaua. You know them.”

“Maybe,” said Teng, sitting up and wiping his hands on his overalls. His voice was a furry bass, as far from a stereotypical Gungan accent as one could get. “Human?”

“Yes. Two human girls. Tall. Attractive.”

“If you say so. I thought they had rather small ears.” His own ears were bound up in a knotted cloth to keep them out of harm’s way.

Kylo stood over him, fists clenched. His eyes were turning even more bloodshot than when he’d awoken, and Niney judged that Teng was on the fast track for a stomping. She rocked forward for a better look.

“All right, yes, I know them!” said Teng hastily.

But he didn’t know where they’d gone. He said the girls came and went. They paid sporadically, but they always paid in the end. They’d paid this morning, in fact, before taking the _Pretty Thing_ out.

“Paid for what?”

“Storing it here. It’s out of the way…”

Kylo stood breathing heavily, teeth clenched, and Niney thrilled with expectation. The morning had been disappointingly short on violence. But in the end Kylo merely shrugged, his jaw working as though he could chew through his anger. “Bring in that Novasword that’s parked on the field and put it where you kept the _Pretty Thing.”_ He raised his hand to the Gungan’s face. “And forget about me. Just remember you’re getting paid.”

“Anything else I can do for you, Excellency?”

“It needs a new navcomp,” said Niney.

“Never seen one of those talk before,” said the Gungan, staring at Niney.

“Let me tell you how my master will rip your arms off,” said Niney pleasantly.

“Yes, a new navcomp,” said Kylo, waving a hand in front of Teng’s face. He helped the mechanic up and brushed him off. The Gungan looked confused, perhaps wondering why he was on the ground in the first place. Kylo gave him the same sudden, alarmingly toothy grin he’d tried before. The Gungan may have thought it was genuine; he flashed his rows of stolidly herbivorous teeth in return.

Kylo and Niney walked away across the landing field. “Why not just steal a ship?” asked Niney. Canto Bight’s spaceport had dozens of ships. Sleek, expensive, fast and heavily armed, some of them. “I can get you into them, you know.” She spun her slicing terminal suggestively.

“I want my lightsaber back. That means finding those girls.”

“You could hire a bounty hunter to do that.” Niney bounced a little as the idea caught hold of her. She’d snorted a few chips from law-enforcement droids in her time, and though she hadn’t held on to them, they’d switched her on to the romance of pursuit. If Kylo paid for a bounty hunter to track down the women, Niney would absolutely live for the daily reports. Maybe the bounty hunter would let her help. Tactical help, anyway. Or advice. They could kick around ideas. Niney had plenty of those. Or she could even be a useful droid to have on the spot when the capture was made. “You could easily win enough at the Casino to pay for a bounty hunter. And I could go along to keep them honest.”

“No,” said Kylo. “We’ll go back to the Casino and question the croupier. He seemed to know them.”

“You should power me up, then,” said Niney, sprouting all her blades and zappers at once. “I can give somebody a little jolt, but if you wired me up right I could really make them pay attention.”

Kylo paused, considering, then turned towards the Novasword. There was a basic toolkit under the console. “Show me what you’ve got,” he said.

An hour later they were making their way back to the Casino. It was late afternoon, and the narrow streets were beginning to fill with people, most of them headed in the same direction. Niney trailed behind Kylo, slashing cheerfully at litter with her newly installed cutting blades. Kylo had proved to be an inventive mechanic, and Niney couldn’t be happier.

They passed some sort of guardhouse. There was a new “Wanted” poster plastered up by the front door. “The First Order is seeking Kylo Ren, traitor and war criminal. Have you seen him?” The reward offered was eye-wateringly large. Kylo stopped and snorted. The picture showed him masked, thus unrecognisable. “Good luck finding that man,” he said drily to nobody in particular.

An unwary pigeolop fluttered past and Niney gave it a dab with her newly-augmented zapper. Kylo spun round and eyed the resulting pile of ash and feathers with disgust.

“Save it. You’ll drain your batteries.”

They found the previous night’s concierge at the Casino easily enough. He was in the foyer, immaculate in a grey suit with gold piping.

“Teezia and Tuaua? Yes, I know those, ah, ladies. You say they’ve taken something of yours? That is extremely unfortunate. Our security will look into it right away.”

“I want to know where they are _now.”_

“If you’ll come this way, we just need you to fill out some paperwork…”

Kylo didn’t fill out any paperwork.

Next they confronted Karlus Stee, the croupier at the Hazard Toss table. He hadn’t started his shift yet, and they found him in a tiny apartment stuffed with trinkets from a thousand planets. The walls were dominated by a huge picture of a dark-haired young woman reclining against an indistinct background, apparently painted on velvet. The woman was naked except for a gold bikini and an expression of incandescent rage. Niney felt she’d seen that elaborate hairstyle somewhere before. Kylo took one look and shuddered.

“Karlus Stee!” he called, and the croupier appeared from another doorway, holding a length of shiny red fabric which he was folding between his hands. His croupier’s cummerbund, Niney realised. In his rumpled tan pajamas, Karlus Stee looked nothing like the fastidious presence overseeing the Hazard table the previous night. “How did you…?”

“Never mind. You know Teezia and Tuaua. Where are they?” asked Kylo.

The croupier yawned and blinked slowly. “Oh. Those two.” He edged warily into the room, eyeing Kylo. “They take something of yours?”

“Yes,” said Kylo, twitching with impatience. Behind him, Niney made jittery little circles on the spot. Surely Kylo would lose patience soon! Then the real show would begin…

“Ah, they’ll be long gone,” said Stee.

“Where did they go?”

“To see the wonders of the galaxy. That’s what they always tell me, anyway. I only hear about it afterwards. They could be anywhere.” He gave Kylo a shrewd look that was not unsympathetic. “Tough luck.”

Kylo slammed both hands down on a malachite table, leaning all his weight on it to shout in Stee’s face. “That’s not good enough. You must have some idea where they’d go!”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know. I’m not friends with them.”

Kylo pushed himself upright and circled Stee, kicking a couple of spindly chairs so they splintered against the walls, and sweeping a vase off the undoubtedly fake mantelpiece. Stee stared down at the cummerbund folded in his hands and took a couple of shaky breaths.

“They took everything I had!” roared Kylo. Then his eyes narrowed. He moved closer, raising his hand to Stee’s face. Stee’s mouth stretched wide and he gave a long, pained groan. Niney took the opportunity to rifle the pockets of a jacket draped over a chair. Five peggats, better than nothing. She slipped them into her chip cache.

Kylo dropped his hand after a moment, and Stee’s head dipped too, as though his neck had lost its sinews. “You think they’ll return soon,” Kylo said flatly. “Why?”

“Teezia’s mother,” mumbled Stee, head bowed. “She’s a slave, she works in the food market by the Cisprian Arch. They won’t abandon her. And she might know where they went.”

“How am I supposed to find her?”

“That’ll be easy. She’s an old woman with a missing hand. Long hair, dyed red.” Stee looked up, and the fear on his face hardened into something crueller. “You should take her for a walk somewhere. A good, _long_ walk. Her life’s only a burden to her anyway, and if she were gone, those two young women would stop hanging around the Casino. They’re nothing but trouble for us.”

Kylo stepped back as if he’d been slapped, and his eyes darkened. “You want me to get rid of an inconvenience,” he said contemptuously.

‘My master is not a thug for hire,” said Niney primly. “Though he could be?” she said, tilting a sensor to read Kylo’s reaction.

Kylo gave a growl of frustration and flexed his fingers towards Stee’s face. “Forget I bothered you,” he said.

Karlus Stee blinked a couple of times and gave him a confused smile. “No trouble, a pleasure to meet you,” he said. “I’ll see you tonight at the grand table, shall I?”

“I expect you will,” said Kylo pleasantly, and turned to go.

“I was going to zap him but you seemed to have it under control,” said Niney as they closed the door behind them.

Kylo ignored her, striding down the corridor from the staff quarters with his shoulders hunched. He was muttering a constant stream of curses under his breath.

The Casino was in full roar as they emerged from the staff quarters. Music, perfume, the light chatter that formed a veneer over the steely competition between the most powerful people in the galaxy. Kylo and Niney cut a straight line through it to the wide entrance and down the steps.

Canto Bight was not a large town, and they had no trouble finding the market. Bright little stalls filled a space between some old stone buildings dominated by a massive arch. Whatever it commemorated, its carved panels were weathered beyond recognition. Stall-holders shouted to be heard over the jangling music balls tethered about the place, all broadcasting in competition. Kylo looked pained. “How can anybody think in all this?”

As they passed a music ball, Niney whipped out one of her zappers and gave it a savage poke. The music ball rasped loudly and cut out in a shower of sparks. “Now that’s entertainment,” said Niney.

A man leapt out from behind the nearest stall, yelling and swiping at Niney with an electric prod. She shrieked and zoomed away, dodging excitedly between tables and legs.

By the time she’d shaken him off and returned to Kylo, he standing under the arch watching an old woman pecking her way slowly around the stalls with a sharp stick. Her knees seemed to pain her. She was towing a trashbot by a strap she’d looped round the elbow of one arm, which ended with a scarred stump at her wrist. The trashbot’s repulsorlifts were broken and somebody had made a crude set of wheels for it. Every now and then the woman would stab a piece of litter with her stick and drop it in the trashbot, which crunched it up laboriously. When she’d cleaned up the discarded food wrappers and disposable plates around a stall, she’d pull out a rag from a bucket on the trashbot and give the counter a wipe before holding her hand out for a few coins from the stallholder.

“Erk,” said Niney. “Her legs are all lumpy.”

“It’s her,” said Kylo. He stalked after her and placed himself in her path, arms folded and legs apart. “I want to talk to you.”

She muttered something, but Kylo jabbed a thumb at the arch. She followed him away from the crowd and lowered herself stiffly onto the steps. The late sun still shone in that corner of the plaza, and it lit up her long straggly hair so its cheap dye blazed red. Under it, her face was startlingly brown and wrinkled. She wore a loose grey robe with a high collar. “The sun is good,” she said in a creaky voice.

“You’re Teezia’s mother,” said Kylo, looming over her so she had to crane her head back with difficulty to look at him.

“What has she done now?” said the woman.

“She’s taken something of mine. And I want it back.”

“She’ll have sold it,” said the woman.

“For her sake, she’d better not have sold it! Where is she?”

“She never forgets.” The woman’s eyes wandered away from Kylo’s face. “They’re good girls, both of them. They’ll bring me good things.”

Kylo crouched down, took her by the shoulders and gave her a shake. “Where is she? Where would she try to sell it?”

The woman hunched into herself and muttered vaguely, “I don’t know. They know a lot of traders. They travel all over.”

Kylo forced her chin up so she had to see him. She twisted her head from side to side, but could not tear her gaze away.

“You can’t lie to me,” said Kylo slowly. His voice held a thrilling note of power. Niney was spellbound.

“No,” whispered the woman, staring back as though frozen.

“When will they be back?”

“Gone already, are they? Teezia never tells me. But she’ll bring me what I need, never mind about that. The good stuff.” Despite Kylo’s power, the woman’s mind seemed incapable of following his questions.

“And when will that be?” he snarled, holding his hand as though to crush the old woman’s face. The woman whined and tried to hide her eyes.

“No! No! I’ll never tell! They’re my girls, they’re all I have.”

“When!”

“Oh, leave me alone!” The woman was crying. “Leave them alone! They don’t mean any harm!”

But Kylo would not relent, and finally she gasped, “It won’t be long! Three ten-days! A month!”

“A month!” Kylo took the news like a punch in the gut. “How do you know they’ll come back at all?” he asked, his eyes blazing. “They stole a fortune from me.”

“They wouldn’t leave me to die. They’re good girls.”

There was a long silence. “She buys you medicine,” Kylo said slowly, his eyes taking in the lines of angry-looking sores that seamed her bare arms and legs.

“And food. But yes. Yes. Medicine. You can’t get it here.” She inched away from Kylo, leaned back into the last sunlight that painted the side of the arch. “How my bones need this warmth,” she sighed. She shut her eyes as though that would make Kylo vanish.

Kylo prodded her with one boot. “Why doesn’t she just steal you from your masters and take you somewhere with a decent hospital? The Maker knows she stole enough from me last night!”

The old woman straightened slowly and reached up to the neck of her robe. She opened it to reveal a metal collar. “Do you know what a Good Behaviour Bond is?”

Niney knew the device sunk into the wrinkles of the woman’s scrawny neck as a Loc8 Enforcer: a locked, wearable explosive that would be triggered when taken outside its programmed perimeter. If Kylo took her for a "long walk", as Stee had suggested, it would kill her.

Kylo looked at it and shook his head in disbelief. “Is that real? Who’d care if _you_ went missing, you filthy hag?”

The woman’s eyes flashed. They were a startling light green against her tanned skin. “I wasn’t always like this.” She held Kylo’s gaze for a long moment and lifted her chin, though clearly the movement pained her. “I was beautiful once. And I was the Count’s mistress.” Kylo looked uncomprehendingly at her, and she continued. “Then he married. The Countess of Canto Bight comes past here every morning so she can spit on me.”

Kylo stepped back, his mouth working. For a moment no words could get past his disgust and anger. Niney saw something else too. _Pity?_ She wondered how reliable her stolen data chips were when it came to reading human faces.

Finally Kylo said roughly, “Teezia’s got something of mine. Whatever anyone else pays for it, I’ll pay more. Or I just need to know where it is, and I can get it myself.” He turned away, then whirled around to point at the old woman. “And if they can’t tell me where it is…”

He didn’t need to name his threat. The way he towered over her, every muscle latent with violence, was enough. The old woman cowered down and down, scraping up dust from the cobbles at her feet and throwing it on her head. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s none of my doing, I’m just an old woman,” she whined. “But spare them, please don’t hurt them. They’re good girls…”

Kylo made a noise of disgust and turned away. “Pathetic. Useless…”

The woman grabbed at his feet. She was rubbing her face into the dusty stones. “I am nothing, do what you want. I abase myself. Don’t hurt them. Hurt me instead.”

Kylo freed himself with a kick and turned away hastily.

Niney followed Kylo as he stormed back through the market. “I could watch her,” she said. “I don’t need to sleep.”

“Easier to watch the spaceport. They have to come back that way.” Kylo’s look was dark.

“But I could…”

“Leave her alone. She’s trying to protect her daughter.”

What that had to do with anything, Niney couldn’t imagine.

A cart covered in a synthetarp barged towards them, forcing him to step out of the way. Steam leaked from under the tarp. Kylo’s nostrils flared in a couple of audible sniffs. Niney saw him gesture with one hand, and the edge of the tarp twitched. A moment later a couple of fresh baked bread rolls flew out from underneath. He caught them with a quick swipe.

He took a bite out of one, then suddenly hurled the other one in a long arc back towards the steps where Teezia’s mother still grovelled. It hit her on the head and bounced off. She didn’t waste time looking for where it had come from, but pounced on it with a cry.

Niney kept a camera canted to look back. She caught a movement near the old woman; a couple of skinny kids ran out, shoved her to the ground and took the bread roll. Niney squealed. “They stole her bread!”

Kylo put his head down and didn’t look back. “Typical. I hate this stinking town and everyone in it. This has to stop!” he snarled. “What is the First Order doing, letting this sort of thing go on?”

“Let’s just go. You can steal money, steal a ship,” she suggested. “You could blast this town, level it. Some of the ships parked up at the port have pretty good cannons.”

“No!” said Kylo.

There was a holoscreen above a small court they had to pass through on their way back to the spaceport. Its usual programming - fathier racing - had been interrupted by something that was making passers by gather in a crowd. Kylo and Niney stopped to stare too.

The screen showed Kylo Ren and Luke Skywalker, their silhouettes outlined against the stark surface of Crait. The watchers fell silent as the figures on screen raised their lightsabers.

Mercifully, the holocast avoided any close-ups of Kylo’s face, preferring to focus on Luke and the leaders of the Resistance. Kylo was visible only as a demonic cloaked figure, back to the imager, charging towards a calm and steadfast man in Jedi robes. They fought in a whirlwind of lightning-fast strikes charged with tremendous energy.

Watching it, Niney understood something about Kylo. Why he couldn’t just leave Canto Bight behind, and with it, the hope of recovering the lightsaber. In the holocast, he was a different man, and the difference was the lightsaber. Every movement carried such fluid certainty that it was obvious that the thing was a part of him. Without it, he was this sad hulk propped up against the wall beside her. A piece of him was missing.

What would Niney be, without the datachips she’d collected and fed into her processors? Just a standard robotic astromech droid, rolling and twittering through her life like a thousand others. And even though it couldn’t possibly be the same for Kylo, her stolen protocol droid chips told her that humans could come to believe such things. That their identity was invested in some physical object.

The holocast ran again. Niney saw Kylo with his lightsaber. Crazy with anger, but also powerful and complete. Without it, he was merely crazy.

General Organa’s face filled the whole screen, making some urgent appeal. Her eyes appeared to bore into every viewer, luminous with hope and urgency. Niney saw Kylo beside her flinch, and a long, slow shudder ran through his body from top to bottom.

Niney gestured rudely at the screen. “That woman still up to her tricks? Don’t worry, General Hux will finish her.”

Kylo gave Niney a murderous glance and turned away, lurching into the kind of walk that boded ill for anyone in his way. Niney searched her protocol droid data for any clue as to what she’d said wrong.

They returned to the ship, which had been moved to Paw Paw Teng’s workshop. Kylo flopped onto the pilot’s chair, exhausted. Niney took her station on the co-pilot’s seat.

Kylo stared for a long time out the front viewscreen. The sun had set, and the few yachts visible through the shed’s doors were more like works of art than spaceships, their beautiful curves picked out with coloured lights and lines of metallic decoration. “These people are so vile,” Kylo muttered to Niney. “These rich parasites. They deserve to burn. All of them.”

“Maybe you should join the Resistance, then,” said Niney.

She found herself abruptly punted down the the ship’s gangway.

“I’m not joining anything!” Kylo shouted after her. “I’m going to _rule!”_

“You and whose army?” muttered Niney in binary, but Kylo picked up the sense of it anyway.

“My army!” he screamed down the corridor. “I’ll win at the Casino, I’ll get a ship, and when those girls get back we’ll find my lightsaber. And then we’re going to make ourselves an army.”

“I have five peggats,” said Niney quietly, hoisting herself into the safety of the ship’s astromech socket. She extruded a camera to peek down the corridor at Kylo.

Kylo sat in silence for a long time. Eventually he closed his eyes. But he didn’t seem to be asleep. His lips moved as though talking, then he opened his eyes, seeming to stare at somebody. His expression, which had lately been fixed in either bitterness or mania, lost its tension, making him look younger and more vulnerable.

“You talked them out of showing my face,” he told his invisible companion. A long silence. His brow furrowed, listening. Suddenly Kylo snarled. “Yes. Yes all _right._ I suppose I _should_ thank you for not wanting me dead.” There was another pause. “Or thank my mother,” he muttered, sounding defeated.


	10. On Warlentta

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Space and Time are odd when you travel at lightspeed. This chapter jumps back in time by more than a week; elsewhere, Kylo Ren hasn’t yet reached Canto Bight; without a navcomp and using only BB-9E’s search algorithms, it’ll take him that long to get there.
> 
> \- - -

Just before Leia reached the Millennium Falcon’s exit, Connix tapped her arm urgently and handed her something. Rey caught a glimpse of something like a necklace of dull, chunky metal. Leia scooped it up, and her lips gave a brief quirk of amusement.

“Oh, this old thing,” she said, fastening it around her neck. The space around her head rippled briefly and then instead of Leia’s face, Rey saw a stranger: a woman with ruddy skin, a square jaw and a somewhat shapeless nose. Leia’s smooth dark hair had become much coarser, and its colour was now a faded ginger colour streaked with grey. “What did I call myself last time?” she asked.

“Magdam Macinnes, wasn’t it?” said Poe. “Your husband was some rich industrialist…?”

“That was it,” said Leia, and a conspiratorial grin passed between them. “And we’re here in Warlentta for…”

“There was that pirate attack on Kwenn Station a few days ago. We could be refugees from that,” suggested Nien Nunb. Like Commander D’Acy, he’d spent most of the time since Crait recovering in his bunk. But he was up now, and the canny old Sullustan only needed one glance at the soldiers approaching the ship to size up the situation. He ripped a bacta patch off his leg and gave it to Finn. “Stick this on your face.”

Finn gave the raw-looking wound on Nien Nunb’s leg a dubious look, and inspected the bacta patch, which was old and curly around the edges. “Eww.”

“It’s the last patch we’ve got,” said Nunb. “Those soldiers probably can’t tell one Sullustan from another. But if they’re working for the First Order, they’ll be on the lookout for you!”

It was true. Connix had spent much of their journey scanning both the public news networks and the secret communications channels of their allies and enemies. The attack on Kwenn Station did not appear to be political; more a symptom of the growing lawlessness in the galaxy since the Hosnian System was destroyed. Details of the attack were sketchy. Finn’s image, however, had made the news on the HoloNet. There was a price on his head, according to voices that supported the First Order. His defection was a symptom of the First Order’s breakdown, said others.

Rey had hovered over the broadcasts as eagerly as everyone else, listening for any hint of what Kylo Ren was doing. Something had happened to the First Order’s leadership, but whatever it was, none of the channels Connix found would speak of it directly.

Finn took the bacta patch rather gingerly and put it over his face so it covered all but one eye and his mouth. Rose patted down the edges, shaping them around Finn’s features.

“Hold still, I’ll cut some holes for your nostrils.” As always, her hands found the perfect tool, a little awl, in one of her pockets.

But there was no more time to talk. The elderly woman who must be D’Acy’s mother had reached the foot of the Falcon’s ramp, and the armed men flanking her were now drawn up on either side.

“I’ll go first,” hissed Commander D’Acy, pushing past Leia. “Mother!” she cried out happily, then called back over her shoulder. “This is my mother, Lady D’Acy, everyone!”

“Larma!” cried the woman, smiling delightedly at Commander D’Acy. She opened her arms for a hug, and D’Acy hurried down the ramp to meet her. Lady D’Acy was an older copy of the one they knew; she had silvered hair and leaned on a little cane, but she had the same blue eyes and beaky nose. Her voice was different from the Commander’s, though. Rey could hear rounded Coruscant vowels as she crowed over her daughter’s surprise visit.

The soldiers stood still, but their eyes were taking in the Resistance crew still gathered on the ramp of the Millennium Falcon. They were clearly wondering who this ragged group was, dressed as they were in mismatched flight suits and worn mechanic’s overalls.

As the two women hugged, Lady D’Acy looked past her daughter’s shoulder at the Resistance crew. One eye flickered in a quick wink that only they could see. “But you’re early!” she cried happily. “The fishing contest isn’t until next week.” She turned to face Commander D’Acy again. “Are all these friends of yours intending to compete?”

“Oh, I’ve talked most of them into it,” said Commander D’Acy, without skipping a beat. “We’ll win this time, you’ll see. But mother, we’ve had the most terrible time. Did you hear what happened on Kwenn Station?”

Lady D’Acy gave a little shriek, clutching at the stiff embroidered collar of her jacket. “No! Don’t tell me you were there! We’ve heard such terrible news. Pirates! In these days!” She turned to the leader of the soldiers standing stiffly beside her. “I’ll be very glad when the First Order puts a stop to that kind of thing. When are you going to do something?”

The leader of the soldiers muttered something apologetic, but Lady D’Acy shushed him with a careless flick of her hand. “Of _course_ you’ll sort it out. But we can all surely take a little time to enjoy the fishing competition first.”

Commander D’Acy continued. “We were on a passenger ship that was docked at Kwenn Station. The next thing we knew, there were armed men everywhere, and there was fighting. The ship was hijacked - it was sheer good fortune we weren’t on board when they took it. But then we had no way home! Luckily, Mrs MacInnes here was coming our way and she’d lost her transport too. Her husband is something big in mining, and she was able to buy this old freighter. She was kind enough to bring all of us that were going in the same direction.”

Leia stepped forward and introduced herself as “Magdam MacInnes”. She shook hands with Lady D’Acy, and her disguised face showed nothing other than enthusiastic goodwill. The armed guards might as well not have existed. Rey avoided looking at them too as she forced her own face into some semblance of calm. The Resistance crew were much better at it; they hadn’t survived this many years on military skills alone. They descended the Millennium Falcon’s ramp cheerily, like any group of accidental tourists.

Commander D’Acy gestured towards the Resistance crew and told her mother, “One or two of my friends here are very keen on the fishing. I’ll introduce you all in a moment. We want to put together a team. I’m sure we’ll win something this year. Can you lend us some gear? We lost ours on Kwenn, of course. The others would be keen to do a bit of hunting until they’re able to get back home.” She was speaking in a breathless gabble.

“Ah good! The game is excellent this year,” said her mother calmly. “To be honest we need a hand keeping the number of Rodian karstags down. We can talk about it over tea.” All smiles, D’Acy’s mother conducted them back towards the house, where a man in a white uniform was stationed on the steps before the door. The guards fell in behind. Rey couldn’t tell from their faces whether or not the Resistance crew really looked to them like well-off travellers who’d had a bit of bad luck. Lady D’Acy forged on as though the watchful soldiers didn’t exist. “Ah, General,” she called up the steps, “I’d like you to meet my daughter Larma. She’s brought some friends for the fishing, and a bit of hunting too, I think.”

“I had no idea you were expecting visitors, Lady D’Acy,” said the General gravely, his eyes making a cool assessment of the group. A dozen or so humans, an Abednedo, a Sullustan and a Wookiee.

Rey’s heart skipped a beat, seeing the First Order uniform. More than one uniform: more men had joined the officer at the top of the stairs.

Behind her, Finn gave a strangled exclamation to Poe. “That’s General Shun.”

“I’ve told you all about my daughter Larma, General? Here she is in person! Such a pleasant surprise!” Lady D’Acy was saying. She turned to Commander D’Acy. “General Shun is here for the fishing too, of course. There’s a whole group of First Order top brass due tomorrow. He and his men are an advance party, helping us make sure everyone will be comfortable.”

Rey tried not to look at the snouts of the house’s cannons, which protruded from the turrets of the third storey. They were still trained on the landing field. _Some comfort._

Lady D’Acy went on, sounding as though she couldn’t have been more thrilled about the First Order taking over her house. “This house hasn’t seen such a gathering in years! Of course we can find room for you all. We used to host these things all the time!”

“What’s Shun doing here?” Poe hissed back at Finn. Then he must have caught somebody’s attention. He changed gears in an instant, smirking up at Leia and saying loudly, “Yeah, _I’ll_ say I’ve caught some fish. The Gluss’elta Sea on Kintan. People have no idea what’s under the water there. And the hunting’s amazing on Naboo. There was this time once…”

“Oh be quiet, once you get started on one of your stories, none of us have a chance,” said Leia, batting him on the shoulder in the most un-Leia-like fashion. “I’ve heard your fishing competition is quite something,” she said, turning to give General Shun an indulgent smile. “These young ones think they’re the first ones ever to have interesting lives.”

Behind Rey, Rose was muttering, low and fast, “Look normal. Look normal. This is perfectly normal. A normal everyday conversation…” Finn growled. Rey glanced back at him. What she could see of his face had lost its usual lustre. Only Poe looked as cocky as ever. Amused, even, as though he’d played these games of deception before.

Chewie brought up the rear next to Nien Nunb, helping him walk on his wounded leg.

“This is Magdam Macinnes,” Commander D’Acy told the General, and repeated her story of how they’d met and why they’d arrived together on an old YT freighter.

Lady D’Acy turned to Leia and the Resistance crew. “Thank you for bringing my daughter home. I hope you’ll accept our hospitality here for a few days. You won’t want to miss the fun.”

Leia allowed herself to be persuaded.

Lady D’Acy turned back to her daughter. “I’m sure we can loan you some decent gear for the competition, if you lost yours on Kwenn.”

By this time the whole group had made its way inside the house and into a large room. Rey had never seen anything like it. The only big buildings she’d seen had been Maz Kanata’s ancient, cluttered castle, and the First Order’s base. That, too, had wasted space on high ceilings and wide corridors. But not ceilings like these, washed with faint colours and lightly carved. And the furniture was so…pretty. There was a lot of it: little islands of tables and chairs, one with a card game, another with a set of glasses on a gilt tray. The walls were hung with pictures of landscapes on many planets, and wide windows opened onto the lawns at the front of the house. Lady D’Acy gestured to some servants who had appeared from an inner room, giving them orders about tea and cakes.

Somehow, with little smiles and politenesses, Lady D’Acy arranged everyone around the room into some order that seemed to satisfy her. “Oh, a Wookiee. Well, you must get tired of our tiny furniture. Try this lounge chair here, it might be big enough. Now, I know _you’re_ an Abednedo. C'ai Threnalli, is that how you pronounce your name? Is there anything you don’t like to drink? Sit here, I’ve got a nice cool jug of Muja juice. And what are these little things that came in after you?”

“They’re bad for furniture, is what they are,” said Finn. “Nobody invited them in.”

“They’re very sweet,” said Lady D’Acy. Chewie growled his agreement and shot Finn a smug look. The porgs hopped up beside him.

The common soldiers who’d come in with them had lined up to stand silently along the walls. Commander D’Acy leaned towards her mother and asked in a careless-sounding voice, “What are they doing here, mother?”

“We live troubled times, I’m sad to say,” Lady D’Acy said. “Things have changed since you’ve been away, Larma. The First Order wants to make sure we’re all safe. Especially when we’re hosting such a big event.”

Rey hadn’t moved very far into the room. It felt too exposed. Apart from the staff, the soldiers and her Resistance friends, there were eight or nine officers of the First Order. Lady D’Acy was stirring them all together with a non-stop current of small talk: the weather, local gossip, the fishing contest. Rey tried to put on the fake smile she saw on everyone else’s face, but she couldn’t manage it. Instead she lingered by the door where they’d come in, pouring herself a glass of water offered by a passing servant.

Behind her she heard a couple of the First Order soldiers conferring. One of them said, “Search that ship.” The other soldier left immediately.

Rey and Rose had worked thoroughly on the Falcon to remove any identification. It was travelling under fake papers as the _Bongo Star_. But the Resistance message to the galaxy was somewhere onboard. Unless one of the crew had brought it out with them. Rey couldn’t remember. If the First Order found that message, the Resistance was doomed.

Rey’s first instinct was to go after the soldier, but something - maybe a warning brush of the Force - made her look over at Leia, who was on the other side of the room. It was still a shock to see her in the coarse face of her disguise. She looked at Rey with an urgent question in those pale eyes with their sandy lashes. Leia hadn’t missed the soldier’s departure either. But other people were watching Rey too, sharp-eyed officers of the First Order. If she followed the soldier who was searching the Millennium Falcon, it would look suspicious.

Often when Rey was poised to make a decision, she felt the nudge of something pushing her towards a choice. Until recently, she hadn’t known what it was. She’d classed it with the feeling she got when she reached for a tool and knew instantly that it was the right one; if she struck it against the coping of an engine it would ring true: well-forged and fit for the purpose. Now she knew it had always been the Force guiding her. She felt it now, as Leia caught her eyes. For a moment she was shaken, reminded of her connection with Ben. They were family. Leia had felt familiar to Rey from the moment they’d met. The same bold, impulsive heart as Ben’s, for all that she concealed it under her smooth politician’s facade.

 _That soldier who left is going to search the Millennium Falcon,_ she thought. Leia blinked, then turned away to smile at something General Shun said to her. Yet Leia’s attention was still on Rey, warm and bright, even as she reached for a drink and complimented Lady D’Acy. Rey hovered by the door, uncertain. The soldier was probably getting some others to help him; if she left now, she could get to the Falcon before he did…but then what?

 _Stay put_ , said a voice in her head. Not Ben’s voice, though. Or Kylo. _Leia wants you to stay there,_ the voice repeated. Rey looked around in case she was mistaken. The Force itself didn’t speak to her with words. This sad, ironic presence was a man; one she’d met once before. The shadows in the corner by the door seemed to thicken, the curtains beside it taking on the shape of a robe. A figure in a dark robe. Wavering for a moment, masked, unmasked.

Well, that made sense. Everyone else in this room was wearing some kind of mask, whether it was visible or not.

 _Which Skywalker are you being today_? Rey asked silently. _Anakin or Vader? Have you got any actual help to offer?_

But then another servant stopped to offer Rey a tray of fruit, and her arrival dispersed whatever shadowy figure had been forming in the corner. The useless Force ghost. Rey reached out reflexively after him. But it was impossible to grasp anything in the Force with her senses, in this crowded room among so many currents of fear and deception. Not when the Force itself was so complex: simultaneously an ocean, a boundary, a dazzling emptiness and a humming concord of souls. The root of all things. And somewhere in all that, there was always a soft place, a transparency, sore to the touch like an angry bruise. She could reach through, if she chose. But if she did so right now, she knew she’d touch Kylo Ren, not Ben Solo.

Over on the other side of the room, Leia cleared a porg off a table of hors d’oeuvres and tossed it, squawking angrily, to Chewie.

“Take them all back to the ship, Chewie,” said Leia. “Look where they’re putting their feet. Lady D’Acy doesn’t deserve to have her hospitality abused like this.”

Chewie growled sullenly, but scooped the porgs up into his long arms and headed out the door. Leia caught Rey’s eye again, a quick, meaningful flick of a glance between those unfamiliar lashes. Rey understood. Chewie would know what to do.

“Some of those soldiers are searching the ship,” she whispered to Chewie as he passed. He grunted to show he’d heard.

“What’s that Wookiee doing travelling with you?” General Shun asked Commander D’Acy. It wasn’t a friendly question.

“Oh, he’s my beater,” said Commander D’Acy. “Flushes the game out. Fantastic nose for it. We were on Devinos for a competition, and I think I owe a lot of my success to him, to be honest.”

“Damned things have to have some purpose, I suppose. I can’t get used to them being indoors, though,” said General Shun, and turned away from Commander D’Acy as though she’d offended him. This brought him up against Rey, who’d been passing him on the way to join Finn and Rose around a plate of food. She could see them crowing over the tasty morsels, but now she had General Shun in her face instead.

“And who are you?” said General Shun, looking Rey up and down as if she herself was some tasty morsel. “Do you hunt?”

“I, ah, look for things. I’m good at finding things,” said Rey.

“Well, I hope you’ll join our party when we go out for a bit of shooting, Miss, ah, what did you say your name was?” He moved closer. “Where have I seen you before?” He put his warm, slightly moist fingers on her bare skin where it was exposed at the top of her sleeve. “Lovely garment. Unusual.”

Rey froze, shocked by how instinctively her fingers twitched towards a weapon. A knife. Anything. She had nothing. Least of all the guile and diplomacy that was needed now. If she did anything to defend herself from this greedy-eyed general, the soldiers would turn hostile. It didn’t matter how much the Force swung a fight in Rey’s favour, she couldn’t protect everyone in the room. With the Resistance down to fifteen people, they could afford no casualties at all.

Lady D’Acy appeared as if by magic, taking General Shun by the arm and asking him whether any of the First Order visitors arriving tomorrow had food allergies. “I’m sorry to interrupt your conversation with this charming young lady here, but I need to confirm our food orders today…”

It seemed like hours before they were all released. Lady D’Acy’s staff conducted them to their rooms with offers of fresh clothes and instructions to freshen up for dinner. Rey went immediately to Leia’s room and found Connix, Finn, Poe and Rose there already. Leia was lying back in a chair while Rose and Finn checked the room for surveillance. As soon as they pronounced it clean, Leia pulled off her necklace. She gave a groan of relief as the disguise came off. “It makes this terrible high-pitched noise and my face feels like I’ve got insects crawling on it the whole time I’m wearing it!”

“The main thing is, it worked,” said Connix. She took the disguise collar and laid it on a charging plate she found beside the bed. “It’ll need a couple of hours. You might be a little late to dinner.”

“I might find I’m indisposed,” said Leia, in the braying voice she’d adopted for her role as Magdam MacInnes.

“So, what’s the plan?” asked Finn, who hadn’t been near Leia in the drawing room. He’d been in a group with other Resistance crew members distracting five of the First Order officers with a game of Sabacc.

“D’Acy’s conferring with her mother at the moment, but I think she, Poe and I are going to take part in the trials for fishing contest, and keep General Shun and his men busy. The rest of you will have to divert power from this house’s cannons to the comms mast we saw outside. Should be easy, because it was originally wired up that way when the D’Acy family controlled a big shipping network. We’ll still need a second line from the Falcon to the mast to give our broadcast the power we want. We need to do this as soon as possible.”

“Why don’t we wait until the contest’s over and the First Order go home?”

“Because there’s an election on Warlentta next week,” said Leia.

“I didn’t hear anything about that,” said Poe, who’d been fishing for information during his Sabacc game.

“That’s because it’s a topic everyone is avoiding. The First Order is becoming very unpopular here. If the opposition party sees enough support for the Resistance, they could use us and our message as a key to winning this election. We need a safe base to operate from, and a pro-Resistance government on Warlentta can provide that. So our message needs to go out before then, to let the galaxy know there is a Resistance they can count on.”

“Where’s the datachip with our broadcast?” asked Rey. “Did Chewie get it from the ship?”

“No, it’s still on there,” said Leia. “The soldiers were already on board. He knew they’d search him when he left the ship, but he managed to get the chip out of the comms cache drawer and leave it with the porgs.” Leia gave a wry grimace. “You know how they’ve been using one of the space suit lockers to do their business? It’s there.”

“Yeah, I found that out when I went outside to put on the new antenna dish,” said Rose feelingly. “Took all day to get the smell off. I was _this_ close to flushing those porgs out the airlock!”

“Let’s hope that stuff’s not corrosive,” said Finn.

“The chip will be fine,” said Rose. “And I guarantee you those soldiers are not going to search that locker.” She wrinkled her nose at the memory.

Commander D’Acy came in then and filled them in about the fishing contest. It was a big annual event for the whole sector, with lots of media coverage and big prizes to be won.

“The truiit fish migrate through an estuary 20 klicks away. They travel in schools, led by guardian fish who became insanely aggressive as they approach their breeding grounds.”

“Is that fun, is it?” asked Finn, scratching around the bacta patch on his face. It wouldn’t survive being taken off more than once, so he had to keep wearing it.

“It’s exciting,” said D’Acy. “They’re about the same size as us, and they can jump out of the water and survive for a short period of time. Their fins open up into six pairs of claws and they have a poisonous tail spike too. For the contest, you have to lure a guardian fish to the boat - which can’t be a powered craft - tease it into coming out of the water, fight it and kill it using only a hooked stick. And you try not to damage their skins.” She pointed up at the brilliantly patterned wall hangings around the room. They looked like artisanal work, but a closer inspection revealed a naturally scaly texture.

Rey tuned out of the conversation. All afternoon that soft spot in the Force had been nagging at her. A potential link. Kylo was on the other side of it. For days, she’d had the impression that he was traveling somewhere, stitching his way across the galaxy in wide sweeps, searching for something. Bereft of the weight of the First Order and its obligations, she was sure. A compass needle swinging wildly, without Snoke to guide him.

“I’m going to rest for a bit,” she told the others, and went back to the room she’d been given. It was simple but light, with big windows giving a view from the second storey. Small six-legged creatures grazed in groups across the lawn, leaving trails of pale lavender in the green as they exposed the stems of the grasses they ate. Beyond them was a forest. The trees were different to the ones on Takodana, mostly simple, massive stems with big, light-green leaves, like a child’s drawing.

The forest on Takodana, where she’d first met Kylo. As she stared out the window, her mind returned there.

Suddenly she was aware of somebody’s gaze on the back of her neck. She turned, and the room was no longer empty. Kylo was lounging back, half in and half out of the long sofa behind her as though he might be sitting in something similar on his side of the link. A pilot’s seat, for instance. His space-dark hair was lit by the flickering blue light of lightspeed.

For a moment she could only stare, taking in the sharply-drawn lines of his face, the dark shadows under his eyes. She recognised the tunic he wore, but it was no longer crisp and clean. He looked as exhausted as his enemies in the Resistance. His stare in return was like a wounded animal’s, mute in the face of pain. He had the same pride as a wild animal too. Rey could read it in the way the lines of his mouth hardened, the way he veiled the naked longing in his eyes. He lifted his chin in contempt.

“Where are you going?” she asked suddenly.

The Force swirled between them, muddying the transparency between them that allowed them to talk. But not before Rey had read the answer in his mind. _Canto Bight._

Then Kylo was gone, and Rey was left staring out the window of the D’Acy mansion at the alien forest that surrounded its cultivated lawns. Beautiful and calm in the long golden light of sunset. A place where the scions of galactic nobility were meant to walk, talking of small things in measured voices. As D’Acy’s family did, and the First Order officers were doing, and as Leia could do if she chose. And even Kylo, if he’d taken a different path.

Instead he seemed to be flying across the galaxy, outrunning disaster.

Because Rey was becoming increasingly sure of one thing; wherever he was, he wasn’t on the Finalizer or the Supremacy. He might be on the run from the First Order as much as Leia and Rey were.

Leia needed to know where her son was headed. Yet Rey lingered alone in her room, savouring the moment of intimacy she’d just experienced. Short and uncomfortable as it was, it was something she was reluctant to share.

It was late when she finally visited Leia’s room. Leia was alone, seated in the bed, her hair loose around her shoulders. The lights were turned down low. Rey sat down next to her, and felt a hard lump under her thighs. Of course Leia wouldn’t go to bed without a weapon. Rey shifted herself off it.

“I saw Ben. Through the Force, like I did the other times.”

Leia’s face went very still as she waited for Rey to continue.

“Every time I feel him through the link, he’s going somewhere alone, and something is making him desperate. Leia, I’m more and more sure that he’s left the First Order.”

Leia nodded slowly. “All those First Order transmissions Connix intercepted. They didn’t say it directly, but I wondered. There’s no Supreme Leader Kylo Ren. It’s all Hux, now.

Leia’s face was unreadable. Hesitantly, Rey laid her hand on Leia’s. _This is what people do, isn’t it, when they want to show sympathy?_ But Leia gave no sign she’d even noticed.

What did she feel about the son who had led two attacks against her? Who had murdered her husband and sworn his allegiance to an Order that would tear down everything Leia believed in? What was that pain like?

Nothing in the Force or her own native empathy could tell her. Silently, Rey removed her hand and left the room.


	11. A Broadcast

Lady D’Acy’s husband joined the household for breakfast the next day, floating in jovially on a glide chair. Everyone called him the Colonel, though he was dressed very casually in towelling robes. He seemed quite unwell, but as he surveyed the crowded dining room, his face creased with satisfaction. Rey looked around too, wondering what he saw in them all: the rag-tag Resistance, tired and dirty as they were, seemed ill-suited to the elegant surroundings. Nor did the First Order officers look entirely comfortable, though they at least were clean and smart. Lady D’Acy glided around the room, smiling and nudging everyone towards the food, or grouping them around the tables. She exchanged a glance with her husband, and her face went still for an instant. He nodded slightly, and nudged his glide chair over to General Shun.

“You’re quite the sportsman, eh? Tell me, have you ever been to the Maltechor Badlands?”

General Shun hadn’t, and it was a good quarter of an hour before he could escape from the Colonel’s description of the place and its alarming wildlife. Rey swore she could see a gleam in the Colonel’s eye every time he caught General Shun shuffling his feet impatiently.

Next the Colonel engaged Poe in a blitheringly dull conversation about hunting blasters, and Poe rose to the challenge heroically, keeping up a stream of macho nonsense about the huge and hideous creatures he’d bested on a dozen worlds. Connix listened to them both, and proved herself capable of producing the most girlish squeals of admiration. It hurt Rey’s ears.

“What about you?” said the Colonel, turning to C'ai Threnalli. “Your species are famous hunters. I suppose you’ve had a few narrow escapes.”

“I have never had a narrow escape,” said Threnalli proudly. “The art of hunting lies in having everything planned out so there are no exciting circumstances.” Poe rolled his eyes, laughing. Threnalli’s dry calm was a running joke between them.

“I beg to differ!” said the Colonel, and enlisted the nearest First Order officers to support his defence of living dangerously.

Then he took them all out hunting on the family’s estate, leaving Connix, Finn, Rose and Nien Nunb to creep into the basement, where they worked on installing a switch to re-route power from the mansion’s defences to the comms mast.

Meanwhile, Lady D’Acy had ordered some landscaping done between the house and the landing field, claiming the ships ruined the view. By the afternoon, worker droids were digging up the ground and installing masses of fully-grown trees and shrubs flown in for the event.

Chewie took the porgs out for a walk and had a good look at the work before reporting back. The landscaping provided a lot of hiding places, he said. But he’d also found a soldier patrolling the landing field.

“He might have to meet one of those head-ripping game beasts the D’Acys were talking about,” said Poe.

“Those soldiers aren’t First Order,” said Finn. “They’re hired watchmen. Just doing a job.”

“So lure him away,” suggested Rose.

“How?” asked Poe.

“Make some noise he has to investigate. Like an animal noise,” said Rose.

Everyone looked at Chewie. He shrugged, half amused, half annoyed. Then he opened his mouth and a soft keening came out that raised the hair on the back of Rey’s neck. The unearthly noise went on, sounding almost but not quite like a child or a woman. Chewie ended on a series of quiet sobs that made the others look uncomfortably at each other.

“If he won’t check out what’s making that noise, he’s dead inside,” said Rose.

\-   -    -    -

That night, Rey went out with Finn, Rose, Connix and Poe to lay cable around the edge of the landing pad between the Millennium Falcon and the landing field’s old comms mast. The new trees, machinery, and piles of dirt made it easy enough to hide their work, but Rey spent the night with her nerves wound tight as springs, afraid every shadow would resolve into a too-inquisitive soldier or surveillance drone.

But the only soldier on guard had been sniffed out by Chewie already, and he'd gone off to lure him away. They could hear Chewie’s mournful wails on the margins of the forest. A weak flicker of light showed where the soldier was shining his torch looking for the source of the crying. Occasionally he’d swear as he tripped over the uneven ground.

Connix and Rose crept around the comms tower, checking it still worked. They left the other end of the power cable coiled under a pile of dirt. They’d need to lay a short stretch across the duracrete of the landing field in order to connect it to the Falcon, and nobody had figured out how to do that undetected.

“Set fire to the front of the house, run out and connect the power while everyone’s panicking?” suggested Poe.

“I like that you think big,” said Finn. “But no.”

After their night's work, they were exhausted next day. But there was no rest: Colonel D’Acy wanted to take them hunting too. “My daughter’s told me you’re all dead keen for some action.”

“It keeps you away from General Shun, dear,” murmured Lady D’Acy to Rey.

They took turns riding on the back of the Colonel’s glide chair, making no attempt to look for game, and went to sleep in a clearing. When they woke up, Colonel D’Acy was nowhere to be seen. Before they could panic about finding the way back to the house, he reappeared with a big armour-plated beast strapped across the back of his glide chair. Its long tail ended in a spiky, bony club, and the mouth lolled open to show many sharp teeth. One half-open eye gleamed a malevolent shade of yellow, making Rey start.

She looked at the innocent-seeming forest around them, filled with bright-green light and soft insect sounds. Their midday nap suddenly seemed less of a good idea.

“I’m glad I wasn’t expected to kill that,” said Poe. “Are there a lot of these things around here?”

“No, I ran this beauty down in the Wickita Hills, a hundred klicks away,” said Colonel D’Acy. “He’s been in our freezer for months. I’ve thawed him out so we can return from our hunt, ahem, victorious.”

So they all returned to the house, Poe boasting loudly about his kill. “Dinner’s on me!” he said, bowling through the front door with a dead beast on his back as though he’d been doing this all his life.

Rey’s teeth ached with tension by the end of the day. For all of Lady D’Acy’s machinations, it was impossible to keep the First Order and the Resistance apart entirely. Mealtimes were torture. Every time General Shun saw her he wondered aloud where he’d seen her before. The First Order officers could turn up anywhere, counting chairs or cutlery or inspecting beds on behalf of the expected guests.

The next day the honourable guests themselves arrived with their retinues; an Aqualish warlord and his family, and two more First Order generals. Technically they were no higher in rank than General Shun, but they were obviously closer to the centre of power than him. The mood in the house turned electric.

Lady D’Acy took the new arrivals straight out to the estuary “to get in some practice” before the fishing competition. Finn breathed a sigh of relief; his bacta patch disguise had only worked so far because General Shun was either stupid or very uninterested in First Order news. These newcomers might not be so easy to fool.

“No, we’re ready now!” said Finn as soon as the other guests had left, Leia and Commander D’Acy among them. General Shun’s invitation to them had been most pressing, as though they made him uneasy enough to want them where he could see them. Most of the First Order officers and their hired soldiers had gone too. “We know what Leia would want us to do. This is as good a chance as any.”

Colonel D’Acy came doddering along the upstairs corridor where they were assembled. “You might want to wait until after lunch,” he said. “I hear it’s a heavy meal. A lot of people might want a nap afterwards.”

The long tables of the dining room were half empty, with just a few First Order officers and guests left behind. Colonel D’Acy wittered on unstoppably about local wines, offering them around freely for comparison. Heeding his earlier warning, Rey and her friends hardly picked at their food and only pretended to drink. One by one the others left the table, yawning.

“You wanted to see the wine cellars, I believe,” said the Colonel loudly to Connix and Rose. They followed him towards the basement stairs. Rose was wearing one of the smart dresses Lady D’Acy had loaned her. A number of small tools made slight lumps in the pleated fabric around her waist.

“I need some air. Come for a walk?” Finn asked Poe and Rey. They wandered out to the airfield, kicking at clods of dirt. As soon as they were mostly hidden behind the new trees, Finn scratched furiously at the edge of his bacta patch, now well past its use-by date. Poe picked up a fallen branch and pretended to demonstrate truitt-fishing for anyone that might still be watching them. Their steps led them by degrees towards the comms tower. Chewie was there already, sitting in its shade with the porgs around his feet. Rey crouched down and they crowded around her, asking to have their heads scratched. Chewie pulled the data chip with the Resistance broadcast out from the fur under his bandolier, and handed it to Rey.

“Is there a sentry?” asked Finn.

Chewie lifted his head and sniffed a few times. He pointed towards the lawn at the front of the mansion. The soldier was standing by a piece of statuary. Judging by his slumped shoulders, he was bored.

“Distract him. Take him a porg or something,” said Rey.

Chewie nodded and called the porgs to him with a chirrup. They followed him towards the soldier, who straightened up as the unusual procession approached him.

Rey took the data chip into the comms tower. Her footsteps rang softly as she climbed the metal stairs. Just before she entered the door at the top, a shadow appeared on the curved wall of the stairwell. Before she could react, she was face to face with a soldier.

“What are you doing here? This is off limits,” he said.

Rey looked at him. He was not a First Order soldier. He was one of the hired guards, a local man just doing it for the money.

“I was just curious. It’s so busy back at the house…I came out for some fresh air, and wondered what this tower was…” Rey trailed off. She didn’t have her staff with her - it would have attracted too much suspicion to carry it. Even so, she wasn’t afraid, exactly. Just uncertain. Because it was one thing to start a fight with somebody who wanted to hurt her or steal her food or take something of hers. She’d done that plenty of times on Jakku. But the data chip in her hand wasn’t food, or shelter, or safety. It was an ideology. The Resistance and the First Order would both kill for it without a second thought.

Rey had doubts.

Then the guard looked down at the data chip she was holding. His hand started to move towards the weapon on his belt, and Rey’s instincts took over.

She took one step further up, smiling. “What’s up here?” Coming level with him, she put a hand on his shoulder. A quick shove with that hand and a foot hooked round to push at the back of his knees, and he was teetering on the edge of the top step. Grabbing the stair rail, she ducked under his nearest flailing hand and twisted round to grab his arm and swing it in a wide circle that threw him completely off balance. A backwards kick from Rey forced him to take a wide step into emptiness. He grabbed at air, and then he was falling, his feet and shoulders hitting the steps with heavy thuds, his head with a sharper sound that made Rey’s eyes squeeze shut.

Poe and Finn’s exclamations came up from the foot of the stairs. Rey went down.

“You okay?” asked Finn. He always asked that. Rey managed to nod, just. Her nerves were so keyed up that she could barely even glance for the dead soldier. He looked like he was just sleeping, anyway. Though her nose was not fooled; the sickly, slightly metallic smell of blood was enough to make her gorge rise.

“Let’s hope Colonel D’Acy has another one of those Rodian karstags in his freezer. Maybe we can make it look like this guy ran into the local wildlife,” said Poe. He didn’t seem too worried by the dead man at his feet. Rey nodded again. She held up the data chip and pointed back up the stairs. Her mouth was too dry to talk.

The set-up inside the transmission room was simple. The machinery came to life with a low hum, and lights sparkled on the console. Rose and Connix must have transferred the power from the house’s defence system already. Rey put the data chip in the outgoing messages slot and checked the power levels. A thick yellow bar showed that 35 percent more was needed to push it into the green.

Connix came panting up the steps a moment later. “D’Acy told me how to mask the signal. Once it’s gone out, it’ll broadcast from a relay way over in the Pengalan system. It won’t be traced back here at all.” She flicked a couple of switches and toggled quickly between a couple of data screens showing squiggly line graphs that meant nothing to Rey. Connix adjusted a dial slowly, watching her screens. After a moment she pursed her lips and nodded. “It’s set. Best we start. I didn’t see anyone around back at the house.”

Rey signalled out the window to Finn and Poe, who were fooling around throwing dirt at each other from a pile at the edge of the landing field. Quickly they pulled the remaining power cable out from under the dirt and walked it over to the Falcon. Chewie was inside already, with the hatch pulled almost shut. He dropped a connecting line down through the crack he’d left open. Poe clicked the two ends together. Rey turned back towards the comms console. The power bar shot up to green.

They both put their hands on the transmission busbar at once and pulled it down. It connected with a fat, solid click, and the power bars flickered. The hum climbed to a high whine then faded out past the range of hearing.

“Now what?” asked Rey.

“Now we wait.” Connix was watching another set of screens. They came to life with a series of spiking lines, then settled into a regular wave form.

“That’s it. The relay’s picked it up and it’ll keep repeating it to the whole HoloNet,” said Connix. “We are the spark that will ignite the fire,” she quoted softly. Then she pushed the busbar closed, and the room fell silent again. Rey helped her retrieve the data chip and close everything down.

Connix gave a thumbs-up out the window to Finn and Poe, who were sitting by the Falcon. They unhitched the power cable, rolled it back to the edge of the field and dropped it in a hole. Chewie came back, opened the hatch of the Falcon and herded the porgs back in from their daily walk, pulling the connector cable up as he did so.

Everything normal. Apart from the dead soldier. Chewie had dragged the body off into the forest, but it was only a matter of time before he was missed.

All through dinner, Rey’s shoulders felt ready to crack from tension. The fishing party were back, laughing, sunburned and slightly scratched. Leia was as loud and back-slappy as the rest. The truitt fish had been “moderately lively”, Lady D’Acy said. The Colonel was absent, pleading headache. Rey guessed he was thawing out one of his hunting trophies to arrange into a tableau with the body outside. He must have succeeded; halfway through dinner a soldier came in and conferred with General Shun in an urgent whisper. They went out together in a hurry. But nobody returned to question Leia’s party, so the “wild beast” ruse must have worked.

The Resistance met in Leia’s room later that night. Dropping her disguise, Leia looked utterly exhausted.

“Cheer up,” said Poe. “We were busy while you were gone.” His eyes sparkled with the news. It had all been a big lark to him.

Leia looked up from where she sat rubbing her temples. Hardly daring to hope. “You sent our message?”

“Yes!” said Connix. “It’s going out to the galaxy right now.”

Leia smiled at each of them in turn, her eyes shining. She was close to tears. “I’m so proud of you all,” she said at last, when she could speak again. “Now we have hope.”

They sat, savouring their success. Now their message was sent, nobody had much to say. Rey rolled her shoulders and they crackled with tension.

Finn smiled sympathetically, reaching out a hand to give her back a rub. “Wears you down, doesn’t it?”

“I want to celebrate, but I’m afraid I have to sleep,” said Rey.

Leia nodded. “We all should. We can celebrate when the First Order’s gone.”

Back in her room again, Rey looked out over the darkening landscape outside. The stillness of oncoming night invited her to sink into a meditative trance. The soft energy of the Force was all around her, easily reached in this moment. Kylo, or Ben, was out there somewhere too. He would see their message soon. See images of himself, fighting a battle against someone who couldn’t be defeated. She wondered whether he was haunted by Luke, as Anakin occasionally haunted her.

Then with no warning, Kylo was there. Sitting behind her in his pilot’s chair again. This time there was no flicker of lightspeed around him.

“Having a nice gloat, are you?” he said bitterly. “Did you enjoy making me look a fool in front of the whole galaxy?”

“What?” Rey snapped. She’d half wanted him to appear. Now she remembered all the reasons why she’d rather he didn’t.

“Your holocast. The fight on Crait.” His face was stiff with anger.

“Get lost!” said Rey. “You made your choice. Leave me alone.”

“And you’ve made your choice. How’s that working out? I can see you’re somewhere nice.” He made “nice” sound like a curse. “Making friends with everyone you meet, I suppose.” His lips compressed as if it was all he could do to stop himself spitting. “What now? Are you going to make the galaxy safe so you can settle down and have children with some loyal Resistance foot soldier?”

“Why are _you_ the one that’s acting hurt?” she snarled. “Your troops tried to shoot me out of the sky.”

Kylo winced. “I didn’t know you were in the Falcon. I thought you’d left in one of the Supremacy’s ships.”

“You tried to kill your mother. You ordered them to fire on her!”

Kylo brought his knees up, hugging his arms around them in a protective reflex. The gesture made him look suddenly very young and vulnerable.

“I thought she was dead,” he muttered.

Rey’s mouth had fallen open. She shut it with a click. Suddenly Kylo’s heartlessness on Crait took on a different cast.

He must have walked into Snoke’s throne room believing he was utterly alone in the galaxy apart from Rey. He’d gone in there with no father, no mother, and a commitment to die rather than allow himself to remain in bondage to Snoke. He’d thought Rey was his only hope.

And she’d turned him down.

“Leia’s alive and well, Ben, just as you saw her on our holocast. She’s…” Rey flailed around for the right words. “I don’t understand why you hate her so much. She’s tough, but she’s been nothing but kind to me.”

Clearly she’d blundered again. Kylo’s eyes darkened with pain. “Sure. Everyone likes _you._ I bet you’re the daughter she wished she had.”

“She wants _you,_ Ben! She wants you back. Stop hiding.”

He stared at her, his face becoming once more unreadable, hateful. Eventually he said, “I’m not Ben. And I’m not hiding.”

The sudden arrogance of his tone stung her. “No? You must thank your lucky stars our holocast doesn’t show your face.”

He gave an angry hiss through clenched teeth. She’d scored a point.

“You’d be too much of a target if everyone recognised you,” Rey said.

“You talked them out of showing my face,” he said. His expression became thoughtful.

“I might not like you, but I don’t want to see you shot down in some alleyway like a mad loth-hound.”

“Yes. Yes all right. I suppose I _should_ thank you for not wanting me dead.” He didn’t look thankful in the least. He just glared at her, disdaining her concern.

“Thank your mother. She insisted we don’t show your face.”

“Or thank my mother,” he said bitterly. He hugged his knees and the defiance went out of him. A moment later he was gone, fading out like a bad dream.

Rey threw herself on the bed, curled up in a ball, and pulled the pillow over her head. _Imagine a conversation with Kylo Ren that went well. One where he answered to the name his parents gave him._

Yes, she could imagine those conversations. But imagination did nothing. Their real conversations only left her bruised.


	12. The Gambler

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Without Snoke, without the First Order, without Luke, and without the name and class and family he was born to, just who is Kylo Ren? He's not the first young man to lose himself while searching for answers. He'll fall fast and far, and it's not the darkness within the Force that takes him, this time. 
> 
> Trigger warning for addiction.
> 
> * * *

On their flight to Canto Bight, Niney had grown familiar with the way Kylo woke up. One minute he’d be shifting uncomfortably, his chest rising in hoarse, dragging breaths and his eyes tracking desperately after something under his closed lids. The next moment he’d be awake, wholly present, his awareness like a searchlight. Today was no different. The previous, disastrous night of questionable alcohol had sent Kylo into a deep sleep that lasted until early afternoon. But suddenly he sat upright and glared at Niney.

“What are you looking at.” Not really a question.

“Nothing,” said Niney. “Except those ships out there.” Lovely, expensive craft, glowing with good maintenance.

Kylo stared at them. “They’re just toys,” he said, and levered himself heavily out of the pilot’s seat. “Well. Time to earn some more money.”

“Don’t you need to have some to start with?”

“Well, Teezia told me one useful thing.” Without explaining further, Kylo led the way back to the casino and waded through the people already gathering around the tables. The afternoon crowd was relaxed, more interested in chatter than serious gambling.

He fetched up next to Snook Uccorfay, a small, loud alien who dominated one corner of the racetrack bar. Uccorfay paid little attention to the fathier races visible from the wide balcony, being more engaged in talking to two women. So he didn’t notice Kylo settling himself at the bar behind him, nursing the glass of water that was all he could afford. Niney had to put up with Kylo using her as a footstool.

Uccorfay’s catalogue of exploits ran out eventually, and the women joined in his merry laughter. They appeared to be trying to catch Kylo’s eye too: tossing their heads back dramatically to expose their slender jewelled throats, and aiming their wide white smiles over Uccorfay’s head. Kylo curled his lip and looked away.

“Well, Snookums, it’s been lovely to meet you…” one of them said, putting a confiding hand on Uccorfay’s age-spotted paw.

The other one tugged playfully on his nose ring. “You’ve had an adventurous life, you. I wish I’d met you when you were in your prime.” She stood up, caught her friend’s elbow, and the two walked away arm in arm, still laughing.

“In my prime!” spluttered Uccorfay, and the fleshy fringes around his mouth quivered.

“They don’t appreciate experience,” said Kylo sympathetically, leaning forward. Uccorfay flicked an ear nervously and turned, clearly alarmed at the low voice materialising so close to him. “That’s girls for you,” continued Kylo. “They’re the same everywhere.”

Uccorfay folded his paws over his ample belly and looked Kylo up and down. “You look like you’ve had some experience yourself, despite your tender years,” he said. He had a fruity, resonant voice.

Kylo gave him a wolfish grin. “You mean I need a bath and clean clothes.”

“That too. What is somebody like you doing here? I’ll wager you have a tale to tell.”

“And I might tell it, for the price of a drink.”

“I like stories,” said Uccorfay, and signalled a waiter.

Kylo shot a triumphant glance down at Niney, who’d extracted herself from under his boots only to be mistaken for an occasional table. She had two empty glasses balanced on her flat-topped dome now.

“I was part of a team sent to Moraband by the First Order to look for something Supreme Leader Snoke wanted,” Kylo went on. “What that object was, I was never told. But the things that happened to us in that place…”

“I’ve heard it’s cursed,” said Uccorfay.

“More than cursed. Your ears will curl right up into your head when I tell you.”

Kylo told his story, leaning in close, eyes flashing. “Have you heard of Moraband?”

When Kylo’s tale of magic, monsters and narrow escapes was over, Uccorfay applauded, and bought a bottle of Corellian brandy to share. “I may look like I’m built for comfort rather than action, but let me tell you about the time I went to the Hidden Nebula with a team of Mandalorian mercenaries,” he said, pouring them both a glass.

An hour passed, then another. People joined their circle, laughing and clapping until Uccorfay’s skin flushed dark brown with pleasure. Niney collected half a dozen empty glasses on her head.

At the end of it, Kylo unfolded himself from his perch on a stool next to Uccorfay. “Well, I enjoyed meeting you. I did come here to gamble …” he shrugged expressively, patting down non-existent pockets. “Unfortunately my luck ran out. But having some real talk with folks like you makes up for it.”

“Ah, that’s no good!” exclaimed Uccorfay. “I can’t let you waste your day without a little more fun at the tables!” And he handed Kylo a small velvet bag that clinked with the weight of Canto coins. Kylo smiled and bowed. Uccorfay waved him away. “Go. Have fun!”

Niney glided after Kylo, clinking gently with the glasses balanced on her head. “Why didn’t you use your magic powers to make him give you money?”

“I did, a bit. But it’s the Force, not magic. And it’s tiring. I’d rather use it to gamble.” 

* * *

 

The problem was not that Kylo couldn’t win money. It was that he couldn’t keep it.

Although he was tired, his eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion, by late evening he managed to use the Force enough to chivvy a decent pile of Canto-coins from the Hazard Toss table. “That’s enough for now. I need to sleep, and it’ll look suspicious if I win big right away,” he told Niney.

The next night he won enough to play with the high-rollers, but play was broken up by the dramatic entrance of a rich ganglord, who strode in at the head of some expensively-kitted bully boys. He grabbed Kylo’s gambling opponent by the lapels and hissed, “You’ve been undercutting me.” Kylo’s nostrils flared with the expectation of violence, but he thought better of it as soon as his hand dropped to the empty spot where his lightsaber used to be.

The Casino’s own security forces came in then and both cartel owners were dragged off after a short, fierce battle.

“Game’s over,” announced Karlus Stee, the croupier, to whoever was still cowering around the edges of the room.

“But I just won five million!” snarled Kylo. He’d tipped up the hazard table to use as cover from blaster fire, as if he wasn’t using the Force to protect himself as well. Counters and coins were spilled over the floor, and a squad of security droids was swarming around picking them up. Niney’s “help” was rebuffed and she barely managed to steal any.

“You can resume play tomorrow, when we’ve cleaned up this mess,” said Stee. “Out, everybody!”

Everyone peeled themselves off the walls, smoothing their skirts, primping their feathers, and chattering excitedly about the unexpected drama.

“What was that all about?” Kylo asked a smooth-looking Twi’lek man beside him.

“Glitterstim,” he said briefly, with an oily smile. “Of course Maks Matso undercuts the Guavian Death Gang, but his stuff is rubbish. This is the real beauty right here.” He pulled out a squashy pink globe the size of his fist and squeezed it. A puff of glittering dust shot into Kylo’s face.

Kylo’s feet crossed in front of each other and he suddenly had to sit down right there in the corridor outside the high stakes salon. The crowd walked past him, laughing. The man with the pink globe was last, and Niney heard him giggle as he started down the stairs to the Casino’s lower halls. “Cheerio flyboy. First time is always so much fun. I wish I had time to watch.” Then they were gone, and Niney waited while Kylo stared blankly at the opposite wall.

After half an hour Kylo suddenly rolled onto his knees and grabbed Niney with both hands, staring intently into her main camera.

“I’m going to rule the galaxy!”

“I’m sure,” said Niney. “Tell me about it.” She herded him back to the ship, Kylo stumbling and waving his arms, telling her how it was going to be. Each plan more grandiose than the last.

Kylo had the misfortune to hit his next jackpot on Turnabout Tenday, when all big winnings had to go to the Countess of Canto Bight’s Feed the Poor fund. If he’d cleared the table three minutes earlier, he could have kept his winnings. But the chrono clicked over past midnight, and before Kylo could wonder why so many regulars suddenly stopped playing, it was Tenday. Niney thought Kylo would explode as he suffered the humiliation of lining up to spill Canto-coins into the Countess’s golden urn. The rich and famous made a game of it, showering aurodium coins around cheerfully in a competition to see who could appear the most extravagantly careless of their losses. Niney swept up what she could without attracting attention. The urn jittered on its floridly-carved base as Kylo approached. By now Niney could recognise the signs of excessive Force barely controlled. Kylo tipped his winnings in, his face like a thundercloud.

The next night, Kylo fell in with a group of “traders” that were aiming to buy a corvette and start a new line of business. Or they owned a corvette - surplus stock diverted from the Resistance somehow - but they needed the money to liberate it from where it was being held until they could pay their debts. “Funnily enough I’ll be needing a ship too. And a crew,” said Kylo, after viewing the ship. “If I win it back, you work for me for six months, then you can have it free and clear.”

Kylo won handily and the resulting party went on until dawn, with toast after toast offered to “Matt,” the architect of their success. Towards sunrise, somebody offered Kylo a shot of some black syrup. “This’ll put hairs on your chest!” shouted his new friend. Perhaps Kylo would have been more cautious if he hadn’t spent the whole night being praised and admired by a big crowd apparently gagging to accept him as their new leader.

Niney screeched and zoomed toward Kylo, whose glass of Felucian dreamwine was now smoking, the syrup coiled dangerously at the bottom.

Too late. Kylo turned into somebody else: expansive, glowing, charismatic, the life of the party, and shortly afterwards unconscious on the floor of the private party room they’d hired.

Niney sped out on the heels of the “traders,” shrieking that they’d had a deal, and this wasn’t it.

“Hey, an astromech droid. They’re always useful! And this one can talk!” said a huge Dowutin they called The Enforcer. He reached down to pick up Niney. She zapped him with her enhanced zapper, and he fell back, roaring, club-like arms flailing. Niney found herself facing a dozen drawn weapons.

She whipped out of there as fast as she could and commandeered a luggage cart to take Kylo back to the ship.

“It doesn’t matter!” he shouted when he woke up the next day, jerking out of his sprawling sleep in the Novasword’s pilot seat. He leaned in to Niney, his voice low and furious. “Too much good luck would look suspicious. Remember, I’m supposed to be a lunkhead from the Outer Rim, here to have a good time. With just enough beginner’s luck to keep me going until those girls get back and we can find out what they did with my lightsaber.”

“In that case you’re doing excellently well,” said Niney bitterly. She had to admit he did play the role extremely well. Somehow Kylo had cast enough of a glamour about him that nobody connected him with the powerful, arrogant Knight of Ren the First Order were searching for. The Casino regulars had accepted him as one of those awkward farmboys or rookie flyboys who sometimes fetched up in Canto Bight, got hooked on gambling, and struggled along, too dazzled by Canto Bight’s high society to see how far they were out of their depth.

The co-pilot’s seat had become Niney’s regular perch and she was wearing a dent in it. Not from co-piloting, which she would have dearly liked to do. But no, this nameless ship was going nowhere. Whenever they brought up the subject of the missing navcomputer, the Gungan mechanic just sucked his teeth and said replacement parts were hard to find with old ships like theirs.

One afternoon she caught Kylo taking a sniff of some pink powder before they headed into the Casino. “It helps me focus,” he muttered when he saw her main camera sensor narrowing suspiciously.

“Forget about waiting around for those girls to get back,” said Niney desperately. “Like I said, pay a bounty hunter to get the lightsaber. Let’s just steal a ship and get out of here. It’s better than sitting here. In one of those, you could outrun anything.”

“And I’d have to keep running. Which is something I’m not going to do,” said Kylo heavily.

“What are you going to do?”

“Rule.”

 _That again!_ Niney narrowed her main sensor into a beady glare. “Just you and one ship? Against the entire First Order?”

Kylo withstood the scrutiny for a minute then gave up, swivelling round to confront her. “No. I know where I can get followers. Allies. But for that, I need credits.”

“Well stop losing, then.”

Kylo’s fist landed on Niney’s dome with a sharp clunk. “It’s part of my plan!” He sucked on his knuckles. “Ugh. What are you made of, anyway?”

“I’m built for space battles, remember?” She hoisted a sensor and inspected herself for dents. None.

Sometimes he’d start the day with a snort of something “to give him energy,” then spend half the morning raving about his dreams for a better galactic empire. A paradise of order and justice, to hear him tell it. None of his plans sounded feasible to Niney, and if they didn’t get off planet soon, they wouldn’t even make a start.

Other times he’d sit as though listening to something just beyond the reach of hearing. He spoke to somebody who wasn’t there. Mostly arguing, but more than once Niney saw him reach out with his arms as though to hold something, pressing it against his chest with infinite gentleness.

Niney began to wonder whether Kylo was really gambling for any reason except the gambling itself. There was such fierce pleasure on his face when he succeeded in nudging the dice his way. He was not immune to the admiration his wins gave him, either. Nor did he turn down what his admirers offered, and the range of things these darlings of the plutocracy could offer him was frightening. He rarely went back to the ship sober or even, to Niney’s judgement, in his right mind.

“When I rule, I’ll tear this place apart,” said Kylo, as they made their way back to their ship in the early hours of another morning. He waved a bottle up at the lights of the Casino that barely illuminated the narrow street they were on. “All those filthy criminals pretending they’re the lords of the galaxy.”

“Quiet,” said Niney, her sensors spinning around to see if anyone was listening. “The First Order is looking for you, and there’s plenty of them here too! You should be more careful. One day you’ll slip up and they’ll figure out who you are. Especially if you suck up every drug anyone waves under your nose.”

Kylo aimed a kick at her, which she avoided easily.

“The First Order,” he muttered angrily, then roused himself to a shout. “I spent my life denying myself everything! Ab-staining,” he pronounced, with vicious emphasis. “For the precious Jedi…”

“Shut up!” hissed Niney.

“…and then for the First Order. Nothing but train and meditate and take whatever abuse they dished out. Now I’m living my life for me, and I’m going to enjoy myself!” he roared.

He looked desperately unhappy.

There came a morning when they returned to the Novasword and found it gone, replaced by a couple of lounging security guards. Paw Paw Teng must have shaken off his Force-induced stupor long enough to realise he hadn’t been paid for looking after it. He was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s my ship?”Kylo ground the question out between clenched teeth. He took a threatening step closer to the guards. “The Novasword.”

“That piece of scrap!” exclaimed the heavier-looking guard. “The Gungan sold it. There’s no free parking here.”

“Where is it NOW?” Kylo roared.

The other guard pulled a sliver of something from between his teeth and used it to point skywards. “Scrap freighter. It’s jumped to lightspeed by now.” He resumed picking his teeth.

Kylo stood, his eyes darting from side to side. Niney could see the anger building in him like a stormcloud, and she quivered with excitement. No way would Kylo stand for this. In a moment she’d see the guards’ weapons fly out of their hands and their bodies thrown through the air in defiance of gravity. And then they’d have to steal a ship and leave Canto Bight…

“Hey!” said the tooth-picker, just as Kylo was reaching some decision. “You look like that guy in the holocast.”

“What holocast?” asked Kylo.

“That Resistance one. The one from last week,” said the guard, his voice lowered. “The one where Luke Skywalker beats Kylo Ren.”

Kylo went absolutely still, and for the first time Niney saw his face became an expressionless mask. Every piece of junk in the workshop shifted uneasily and the ground trembled. But Kylo gave no sign at all. After a moment he looked around and said in a normal voice, “Do you have earthquakes here?”

“I don’t know,” said the first guard. “But he’s right, you do look like Kylo Ren.”

Niney would not have believed Kylo was capable of what he did next. He stuck his thumbs in his belt, puffed up his chest, and said in a smugly oafish voice, “Do you really think so? People always say so.” And he gave them a big dumb smirk, as though they’d given him the biggest compliment possible.

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re one of _them!”_ muttered the first guard, sounding disgusted. He turned to his companion. “You see? Some of these Outer Rim guys pull on a black tunic and next thing they’re throwing their weight around like they’re the shiz. First Order fanboys.”

“That was close,” said Niney as they went back into town.

They found Paw Paw Teng in a basement bar in one of the narrow streets furthest from the Casino. The bar mostly served non-humans, and Kylo stood out amongst the rabble of Gungans, Dowutins, Bothans and Trandoshans. Kylo stormed into the dimly-lit room. Niney hopped down the stairs after him, buzzing with anticipation. She was not disappointed.

Paw Paw Teng was holding forth at a table in one corner. He had half a dozen other Gungans laughing and yoiking it up with him. Empty bottles and glasses littered the table. Those went flying as Kylo lunged across the table, wrapped his fists around Paw Paw Teng’s ears and pinned him to the back wall.

“What did you do with my ship?” he shouted.

Teng gibbered senselessly, his eyes darting from side to side.

“Hey! Cool now! Chill it down, human!” The other Gungans laid their hands on Kylo as though that would calm him. Kylo shook them off like a fathier shaking off flies, and the Force sent them flying. A pair of Dowutin stood up suddenly, enraged at having their drinks knocked over by flying Gungans. Niney wasn’t sure if one of them was the one that had tried to catch her earlier. It certainly couldn’t hurt to spice things up, so she zapped their bare feet. They hopped angrily towards Kylo. He let go of Paw Paw Teng long enough to throw the table at them.

Teng used the resulting confusion to make a move. Doubling his long form almost in two, he snuck along the wall towards the bar’s back entrance. Niney shot out her grappling hooks and finally got her wish. Screeching happily, she swung on Paw Paw Teng’s ears. He howled and spun around, right into Kylo’s fists. Niney let go.

Kylo slapped him against the wall like a dead fish, holding him by the throat. “Where is my ship?”

“I sold it!” gasped Teng, when Kylo loosened his grip enough to allow him to speak. Kylo shook him, and Teng said, “The scrap merchants came. I couldn’t keep it in my workshop forever!”

“Where’s the money?” said Kylo. “Come on, hand it over. You can’t have drunk it all already!”

Teng started gibbering again. Niney zapped him, and he said quickly, “I banked it. It’s in the bank. Follow me.”

It was time to leave anyway. The Dowutins had enlisted a dozen more bar patrons to help them, and were advancing on their corner. Kylo tucked Paw Paw Teng under his arm like a rag doll, picked up a stool with his other hand, and forged his way through them, bashing indiscriminately to right and left. Nobody followed them out.

“The bank is this way,” said Teng in a meek voice. “Put me down. Let me walk next to you. They will question us if you carry me in like this.” He led them to the waterfront, where the great trading houses had their headquarters along the promenade. “See the Bank of Aargau there?”

Kylo looked over at the bank’s heavy stone facade. In a flash, Paw Paw Teng was over the sea wall and into the water. Kylo yelled and reached after him, trying to hurl some kind of Force powers after him. It didn’t work. Paw Paw Teng was in his native element, a long shadow disappearing smoothly into the depths.

Kylo gave a yell and kicked the sea wall. “That stinking, slimy little…”. But there was nothing to be done. They wandered over to the landing field, as they did every day. Still no sign of the _Pretty Thing_. They swung by the market. Teezia’s mother was still bobbing slowly around the stalls, sweeping up rubbish. No sign of the girls. No leads on where Kylo’s lightsaber had gone.

Kylo found enough loose coins caught in his belt to buy some food. He stood under the market archway, slowly chewing something that steamed in a bed of leaves.

It was too early to go up to the gaming tables again, so they went to the outskirts of the city. Niney watched over him as he slept under the wall that separated Canto Bight from the croplands surrounding it. Kylo’s dreams were as restless as ever. “Rey, no!” he cried out at one point. “What do you really know about those people? They’ll eat you alive!” He looked desperate. He had his hands over his face as though he couldn’t bear to look.

“Bad dreams?” asked Niney unsympathetically when Kylo woke.

“None of your business.” Kylo sat up, hugging his knees and staring out over the fields with a troubled look.

“Who is this Rey?”

“She’s a stupid scavenger girl who thinks she can play at politics.”

It wasn’t easy to get into the Casino that evening. The fight had done nothing for Kylo’s appearance. The concierge took one look at Kylo’s stained tunic and ripped pants and started to bar his entrance. Kylo narrowed his eyes and leaned into him, one hand raised, saying heavily, “I’m attending a private gathering. In costume. As a pirate.” His eyebrows drew down with effort and he was breathing hard by the time he got the concierge to agree.

“Ah yes. How could I have forgotten. The Countess will be expecting you.”

Kylo was at the Hazard Toss table until past dawn, and doing well. The dice danced at his bidding, guided by the Force. He seemed to be making a real effort to win their way off planet, lightsaber or no.

Sunrise found them on one of the Casino’s balconies. Niney’s cache was stuffed with credits and she was well pleased. Kylo seemed calmer too, watching the sun touch the beautiful old buildings below with pink and gold. A soft mist lay on the fields outside the city, catching the light. Then something in Kylo’s face changed. He turned to look at the empty balcony, seeing something that was invisible to Niney.

“Rey, no. Politics is….No! You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know what they’re capable of.” A pause. He listened, looking more and more distressed. “My mother is putting you in harm’s way. You do realise that, don’t you?”

Another listening pause, then he said angrily, “No! Of course you’d have been safer with me. We’d have ruled the First Order, and that’s what we’d have. Order! I had a plan! Not this stupid thing you’re doing, making it up as you go along!”

He reached out to the empty air. “Something terrible is going to happen. Can’t you feel it?” He added, more quietly. “I dream it every night. I just can’t see it clearly enough…”

Then whatever ghost he was talking to was gone. Kylo was left standing, with such raw longing on his face that Niney wanted to jettison every wretched stolen data chip that gave her the empathy to see it.

That night Kylo played feverishly, furiously. Winning again. Yet he was still accepting the drinks and other substances he was offered. He caught the glare of Niney’s main sensor judging and turned away with an angry toss of his head. “Emotions are overrated,” he said, holding a purple phial up to the light. He took a deep sniff of the contents. “Why be angry when you can just float away, float away on this big, pink, warm….” He shut his eyes. “Why be anything?” he whispered.

Then came the day Kylo woke up in somebody else’s hotel room, once again with nothing but the clothes he was wearing. He groaned. “Somebody else was using the Force at the gaming table,” he told Niney. “It’s the only explanation.”

Niney reached in and pulled a document chip out of her cache. “You’re not completely destitute. According to this, you now own a fathier called Dancing Boy.”

“Well, there’s a mercy,” said Kylo. “Did I win that last night?”

“Apparently,” said Niney curtly. “In lieu of credits. Stupid deal, but you agreed to it.” She was becoming less and less enamoured of being part of Kylo’s army of two that was, according to him, destined to take over the galaxy.

“Maybe it’ll win a race for me.”

“According to this document, it’s being treated for a broken leg.”

The hotel staff came to throw them out of the room. “This time, stay out,” said one of the security guards standing behind the cleaners. “We have standards to maintain.” Clearly Kylo, his clothes still torn and stained from his barroom brawl a few days ago, fell far short of that standard.

Niney waited for Kylo to strike them down. To Force-choke them or fling them against the walls in a splat of blood. But he sat where he was, hands hanging loosely, blinking at them with red-rimmed eyes. After a moment he got to his feet and stalked out. Niney followed.

“The fathier comes with a year’s supply of food and the rent on his stable,” said Niney.

So they went to the stables. There was nowhere else to go.


	13. The Stars of the Resistance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Resistance is ready to emerge into the full glare of galactic politics again. But Rey is not ready for public life. Her troubling connection with Kylo endures, a long tether that strains between them.
> 
> _She didn’t welcome the connection. There was so much darkness on Kylo’s end: anger, self-hatred, bitterness, shame and pride. If she let go of him, if it were even possible to let go of the bond, how far would he fall?_
> 
> _There was nobody to ask whether that darkness came from the Force or from human nature. Of all the Jedi masters that ever lived, perhaps Luke could have answered that question best._
> 
> _“He wouldn’t have answered me,” said Rey softly to the empty room. To answer would have been to admit his part in creating the darkness that consumed his sister’s son._
> 
> * * *

* * *

 

The Millennium Falcon’s second landfall on Warlentta couldn’t have been more different. Instead of sneaking through the planet’s surveillance satellites, they jetted over to the capital city directly from the D’Acy estate, openly identifying themselves as the Resistance.

As they made their descent run, Rey crowded into the cockpit with Finn, Rose and Commander D’Acy. Leia sat in the co-pilot’s seat while Poe piloted.

“Look at those crowds,” said Rey, her throat going dry. It was true; the roads to the landing field were packed with people. Poe was taking them low enough to see faces turned upwards, arms waving, fingers pointing.

Poe cracked a big grin. “This is a famous ship.”

“Legendary,” said Finn. Where Poe was ebullient, Finn’s face was a study in quiet satisfaction. He’d spent the last two weeks spreading the legend of the Millennium Falcon through every secret stormtroopers channels the Resistance could acquire.

Leia picked up the comm set. “This is General Leia Organa of the Resistance requesting permission to land.”

“Clear to land on Pad Four, and may I say on behalf of the Warlenttan Sentate, welcome, General.”

The voice was familiar: Echa Modan’s broadcasts had dominated the Warlenttan airwaves in the lead-up to the election; now he was installed as President to a new government that supported the Resistance.

“That’s a good sign,” said Commander D’Acy.

“I do believe the President is going to meet us in person,” said Leia, pleased. Rey could almost see the lightning quick calculus in her head, balancing risk against influence. All the pieces at play in the game of politics. By landing here in alliance with the official government of Warlentta, Leia was casting all her dice at once. There were only fifteen people left in this core of the Resistance. She had to win this round.

The thought of dice seemed to flip a switch in Rey’s head and for one disorienting moment she was somewhere else. Somewhere dark, moodily lit, awash in a roar of voices. She could see people pressing around a table, around a figure in black. Kylo, his face rapt with feverish excitement. There was something off about him. She would almost have said he was sick. He shook something in his big hands, and then flicked them across the table. His face lit up with dark delight at the pattern the landing dice made. Then he seemed to realise Rey was there. His head went up and he stared straight into her eyes for an instant. His nostrils flared: a wild animal scenting something in the wind. But then the crowd moved, leaning over the table with shouts of excitement, and she couldn’t see him any more. The scene faded and she was back in the sunlit cockpit of the Millennium Falcon with her friends packed around her, readying to land.

“Look at all the flags around the landing field,” said Poe, his grin broadening even further. “I do believe there’s going to be a parade.” He turned round and punched Finn in the arm. “How does it feel to be a big deal in the Resistance?”

Finn snorted. He had told that story himself, sighing, “What an idiot I was. Didn’t fool Han for a moment, though.”

Leia had taken it as the offering it was, smiling and shaking her head. “He’d be amazed to see how far you’ve come since then.”

Finn had nodded. He’d lost much of the bravado he’d had when Rey first met him. The First Order had treated him like a machine. The Resistance had given him purpose. Now, he leaned willingly into the traces of the work Leia had given him. It was the weight of freedom that he hauled, and he bore himself as if always conscious of the honour.

It was typical of him now that he’d be the first to turn and notice Rey looking shaken from her brief Force vision.

“You all right?”

“I just…” she gestured. “Crowds.”

He gave her a sympathetic smile, but he couldn’t understand. Not really. He’d grown up in the teeming hives of the First Order. The sight of thousands of people pressed shoulder to shoulder didn’t make his heart jump into his throat.

“I’ll just go sit with the others,” she said, and left the cockpit. She didn’t go to the crew lounge though, where the rest of the Resistance sat waiting for the change in the engines’ sound that would signal their landing. Instead, Rey sat on the floor of the access corridor.

Like most of the Resistance, Rey had spent the remainder of their time on the D’Acy estate staying out of General Shun’s way. All of them had developed a sudden obsession with outdoor pursuits, and the First Order guests barely saw them unless it was around the dinner table, where the talk was all about fish and game. The oncoming election was never discussed, though Rey knew for a fact that both the First Order and the Resistance spent their evenings shut in their rooms tracking the local news.

The much-lauded fishing contest came and went - Leia, Poe and D’Acy were tied up with that for a couple of days, along with Chewie and Nien Nunb. They gave a credible performance as genuine contestants, apparently. Or at least General Shun congratulated them afterwards with apparent sincerity. The contest was won by an outfit from the Southern Archipelago.

“Cheer up, old man,” Colonel D’Acy had told the General Shun as he boarded his hovercar. “We sniffed out the best spot to wait for the fish, but the Southerners had those new hookstaffs, and that boat of theirs cost a fortune. Come back next time, we’ll try again.”

Rey couldn’t have cared less, though she’d shared her friends’ relief once the First Order left the D’Acy estate. She’d spent her days going deep into the forest on a borrowed speeder, pretending to hunt for rainbow birds. Finn and Rose came with her a few times, but they quickly saw that she wanted to be left alone, and went their own way. She’d sat on a high, predator-proof rock meditating over the broken pieces of lightsaber she had. It hadn’t brought her any wisdom. Slowly she’d adjusted to the sounds of the forest; where she’d once listened to the high song of the wind on Jakku’s dunes, she listened now to the living tapestry around her. Birds, small creatures, leaves. Water. That was the most precious music of all. Her heart stopped for a moment each time she heard it and recognised what it was: the slow plink of moisture dropping from her rock to a rain puddle below. The pattering sound it made on leaves, on grass.

It hadn’t surprised her when Kylo appeared on her rock. He’d appeared more jaded and worn. His hungry, frankly appraising stare was nothing new. He hadn’t remarked on the borrowed tunic she wore, green to blend with the forest; or the fact that she seemed better-fed than him: a reversal from when they’d first met. He’d gestured at the pieces of lightsaber.

“That lightsaber…”

“Yes, I know. Shut up,” she said quickly. He probably knew how to repair it. She wasn’t desperate enough to ask him yet. Or maybe…She looked at his bedraggled form. He wasn’t trying to pretend he was with the First Order any more. The Resistance’s intelligence had learned that the First Order didn’t know where he was either. “Come here and I’ll give it to you,” she offered.

“That’s not the future I saw,” he said, but didn’t elaborate.

Rey looked away from his insistent stare. Around where she sat, the rain had spurred the little rock-mosses into flowering. She pulled one up, a living green jewel topped with a golden ball, tiny and perfect. She held it in her palm, offered it to him. “Here. Have this, then.”

His brows drew together in a frown, curious. He leaned in, reached over with infinite care. They were both holding their breath, wholly distracted by wonder: would the Force connect them over this distance? For a moment their fingers brushed, just like in Rey’s hut on Ahch-To. A wave of warmth rolled from her fingertips right through her whole body.

“Pretty,” breathed Kylo, and his fingers closed on the green sprig in her hand. There was a brief flare; the little golden ball opened into a fuzzy yellow puff. Then Kylo was gone. The little flower floated to the ground.

Alone in her bed in the D’Acy’s house, Rey had dreamed about him, but her dreams were terrible. They were in some large space, perhaps back in Snoke’s throne room, but there was almost no light. Kyo dropped his lightsaber and picked up a knife instead. He cut himself open from his collarbone to his stomach in one quick slash, the knife passing through his ribs as easily as the lightsaber would have done. But there was blood, much more blood. He’d held out something to her in his bloody gloved hand - liver, lungs, heart, it was impossible to tell.

“Is that enough now?” he had asked, his face expressionless.

The deck beneath Rey gave a slight vibration and the sound of the Millennium Falcon’s engines changed, cycling down through its landing sequence. Rey shook herself out of her reverie. The Millennium Falcon had arrived amid the cheering crowd they’d seen. There would be a parade. Leia and her crew had already been offered a place at the old Premier House; Warlentta was eager to host the seat of the New Republic, should it come into being. Since the Resistance broadcast had hit the galaxy, its networks had sprung to life. Old alliances, treaties, offers of ships and arms were flowing in. Dozens of leaders had resumed contact, come of out of hiding, started gathering support.

In the crew lounge, the rest of the Resistance were picking up their bags and getting ready to disembark. Rey went to where she’d left her shoulderbag and her staff under one of the seats. They didn’t seem adequate to face the new life Leia had in store for them all, but what else did she have?

* * *

 

The new President, Echa Modan, was among the delegation waiting for them on the landing field. “Welcome, General,” he said, shaking hands with Leia. “Let me just say on behalf of our Senate how much we look forward to welcoming the rebirth of democracy and freedom in the galaxy; in the meantime, rest assured that Warlentta is ready to put our resources at your disposal. This is a great day, General, and we are honoured that you have made our capital, Delessa, the place where you choose to rebuild. Long live the Resistance, and peace to the galaxy.”

“Long live the Resistance, and peace to the galaxy!” The words went round the delegation in a murmur.

Rey stood in the group of Resistance crew behind Leia. A cloud of security droids hovered around them all, sensors spinning warily. There were holoimagers too, faster and more erratic, zooming in to get a better angle on them. Beyond the official delegation, in the solid block of the Customs and Control hall, Rey could see people pressed up against the windows. Their mouths were moving and there were flags in their hands, waving frantically. The thick blast windows silenced the sound of their shouting. But from beyond the spaceport came a deep roaring like surf.

“Is that…people?” asked Rey.

“And all of them glad to see us, kiddo. Remember that!” said Poe.

“We are the survivors of a vicious military assault not only on the Resistance, but on the political freedoms we stand for,” Leia was saying. “And your support now comes at a crucial time. I could not have asked for better people to work with me as we rebuild the alliances we need to secure lasting peace. We may be small, but from here, we will grow louder until we are the voice of the peoples of the galaxy, and we will grow stronger until we become their sheltering arm.”

She briefly introduced the Resistance to Echa Modan and the swarming news imagers; Rey was simply identified as “Luke Skywalker’s apprentice”. It had been decided that the less people knew about Rey, the better. “Let their imaginations and the rumour mill do the rest,” Leia had said. “You’ll be a symbol of our people’s hopes and the First Order’s fears.”

So now Rey smiled and inclined her head to the Warlenttans and the news imagers, as she’d seen Leia do. Leia watched her carefully and Rey returned her approving smile with a more tremulous one of her own. Then that was over; a firm hand in Rey’s back was moving her aside so Leia could introduce Finn. “This is the kind of person who makes the Resistance what it is. He was once a stormtrooper. A cog in the machine of the First Order…”

Finn took his cue. “I did not even have a name, once. The First Order called me FN-2187. I was like thousands of others…” He’d boiled his story down to a few lines: who he was, why he’d done what he did. The news imagers hovered like flies in front of his face, drinking it in.

“Now, if Rose Tico is here, we have a surprise for her,” said one of the Presidential aides, a tall Neimoidian in a pale blue uniform. Another pair of aides escorted a small group who’d been waiting by the entrance to the Customs and Control building. They were stocky, black-haired humans who all bore some resemblance to each other. A family. The youngest was a child, wearing an orange dress so encrusted with embroidery that it stood out in stiff folds. She carried something in her hands with such serious concentration that she almost stumbled. When she reached them, her family ushered her towards Rose. The girl held up her gift: a scroll tied with a wreath of flowers, resting on a ceremonial cushion.

“This is for Rose and, and, and Princess Leia. Gen - General Leia,” said the girl, her high voice shaking slightly. She gave Leia a terrified look then focused on Rose, who gave her an encouraging smile. “From all of us on Hays Minor. We saw your broadcast and we turned our machines against the First Order. We’re free now,” said the girl.

“So we came here!” said another child, surely her older brother. “We want to fight, and we heard Warlentta still has a defense fleet.”

Her parents were standing around her, almost too overcome to speak. “It’s true, it’s what we did,” whispered the woman, crying openly. “The whole Otomok system revolted.”

“We know, we heard on the Holonet,” said Leia. “You were the first. We are so proud of you!” She stepped forward and pulled both parents into a hug. Rose was already holding the little girl in her arms. A hundred imagers flashed on the scene, sucking it in, broadcasting to the whole galaxy.

And then it was time to leave the spaceport. A double rank of soldiers made a path through Customs and Control, and just as well. Crowds leaned over mezzanine railings, clustered on stairs, swarmed the ground floor to push as close to the Resistance as they could. In the large, echoing space, their cheers blended into a constant high shrilling sound. Rey straightened her spine and counted her breaths as she walked, trying not to focus on any of the thousands of faces around and above her. “The Jedi! The Jedi!” they shouted, as they caught sight of her.

 _I’m not a Jedi!_ But there was no point even opening her mouth.

Outside the spaceport hall, a cavalcade of armoured hovercars was waiting. The hardened plasteel windows shut out some of the noise. Rey force herself to keep her eyes open, to wave at the surging crowds, all the way to the city centre and Premier House, where the Resistance would set up its headquarters.

* * *

 

“Do you miss Jakku?”

It was a perceptive question from Finn. A month ago he would still have ribbed Rey about her nostalgia for “that junkyard”.

She looked up at him from where she sat on the smooth, rounded windowsill of her room in Premier House. The plasteel vibrated slightly with the noises of the city outside, busy as ever on this late evening with all kinds of fliers and hoverlifts. Warlentta was an asymmetrical world; this half of it was urban, highly industrialised and, of most interest to Leia, well-defended. The spacious farmlands and forests of D’Acy’s estate had been no preparation for life in its capital.

These days Finn thought before he spoke. He needed to: he spent a lot of time in front of a holoimager, speaking to and for the hidden masses of stormtroopers at large in the galaxy. The handsome leader she’d glimpsed in that first holocast had hardened around him like a shell; in moments of repose he looked almost magisterial. At times when the shell cracked and he smiled his old bright-eyed grin, it was more disarming than ever.

“I miss silence,” said Rey. “There were so many kinds of silence. At midday, that kind of shimmering silence,” she flickered her fingers to show him, “and you felt you would dissolve into the air, it was so hot.”

“I remember that,” said Finn. “When I could stop panicking for a minute, I’d notice the dunes. All curves, nothing made by machines, all with a rhythm, like it had its own meaning. Only I couldn’t understand it.”

Rey nodded. “And in the morning, the silence before the sun came up, and all the colours in the sky…” Rey paused. “Just before the light ran down the dunes, like water. And at night, a different silence. Huge. Endless. Just me and the stars.”

“And here you’re surrounded by people,” said Finn sympathetically.

“It makes me itch!” said Rey. She mimed beating at imaginary insects, like it was funny.

Finn saw through that, though. His voice was a soft burr, as he said, “Don’t let it get to you. Don’t shut us out.”

“It’s easy for you. You love being around people.”

“But remember Rose felt like that too,” he said gently. “At first, she hardly knew what to do with herself, stuck in the middle of the Resistance command with us.”

That hadn’t lasted. Working alongside Finn, Rose had gained a reputation as a woman who was sure of what she knew, and wasn’t afraid to speak out about it. The shy young woman who preferred to talk to machines was gone. Rey missed working alongside her in space, picking salvage.

“Rose knows what she’s meant to be doing these days. I don’t,” said Rey.

“I’m sure Leia has plans for you,” said Finn.

“Mmm,” said Rey. “So far I just walk half a pace behind her while she goes to a hundred meetings. On the way she tells me ‘Now, this is the Omand of Shar, she has a controlling interest in the biggest hyperspace lane hubwards from Corellia, but she doesn’t always realise how much power that gives her in real terms. We’re going to remind her. She’s sympathetic to us, but more importantly, she’s tired of the Hutt cartels leaning on her.’ But when we get to the meeting I just stand there holding my staff like some kind of mercenary guard. I’m not expected to say anything. I don’t know what I _could_ say. I haven’t a clue who any of these people are, and I don’t remember all their treaties and alliances and family obligations going back for centuries!”

There was something else, though, that Rey couldn’t put into words. It was the way Leia switched between her political mode and her personal mode. In private, Leia’s presence was warm and confiding. Her simplest gestures seemed deeply empathetic. The motherly way she laid a hand on Rey’s arm made her eyes prickle with tears sometimes. Leia might ask simply, “Did you sleep well, my dear?” and Rey would almost melt, remembering a thousand Jakku mornings when she’d woken alone, to silence. Leia could make the most ordinary remark proof that here, Rey was wholly understood and accepted.

Then some Resistance business would intrude. Instantly Leia would be _gone,_ even though she might be standing right in front of Rey. Or worse, she’d bark out orders as though Rey was an entirely different person: useful, but not very. It gave Rey a kind of emotional whiplash.

“Talking about your desert reminds me,” said Finn. “What do you think of Aquifer as a name for the stormtrooper channel? You know, it’s hidden underground, you need to know where to dig if you want to find it.”

Rey smiled. “And it’s a _good_ thing. In the desert, water is life itself. Like freedom.”

Finn smiled back, his face becoming all round warm curves. A smiling moon. “You like it?”

“Very much.” Rey yawned, and stretched. “It’s a good name.”

“Don’t crash yet,” said Finn. “Rose and Connix should be finished by now. We were planning to have a drink afterwards.” The two were working late finessing the Resistance’s communications network. The official channels were easily managed - Leia and her supporters went out on everything from Warlenttan public broadcasts to talk shows on a dozen allied worlds. But there was a more subtle network they managed from Premier House’s comms room. It brought them whispers from potential allies and secret observers throughout the galaxy. Just as importantly, they took Finn’s message of rebellion through hidden channels to his former brothers in arms. To where it could be picked up and spread by stormtroopers, unseen by their commanding officers.

“No, really. I’m tired.”

Finn put a hand on her shoulder. “You seem down lately. Have you thought all this…maybe Leia’s trying to train you?”

Rey gave a bitter laugh. “She’s like her brother then. Bad at teaching. And I’m not even sure I want to learn whatever it is.”

Finn shrugged. “I don’t know either. You should just ask.” He looked at her a moment longer, perhaps seeing if she’d change her mind.

But Rey shook her head. “You go, have fun. I need to sleep.”

After Finn left, Rey sat staring out at the disturbed half-darkness of the city night. Sleep was hard to come by these days.

Sleep, or visions. Always visions of Kylo, straining at the end of whatever long tether held them together. She didn’t welcome the connection. There was so much darkness on Kylo’s end: anger, self-hatred, bitterness, shame and pride. If she let go of him, if it were even possible to let go of the bond, how far would he fall?

There was nobody to ask whether that darkness came from the Force or from human nature. Of all the Jedi masters that ever lived, perhaps Luke could have answered that question best.

“He wouldn’t have answered me,” said Rey softly to the empty room. To answer would have been to admit his part in creating the darkness that consumed his sister’s son.

As always, wondering about futures and might-have-beens seemed to open her connection to Kylo. Something stirred in the dimness of the room, and he was suddenly sitting behind her, sharing the deep embrasure of the window where she sat. Close enough to feel the tension in him, every muscle strung so tight that he seemed to vibrate on the edge of flying apart. Close enough to feel air stirring the loose hairs tucked behind her ears. Shallow, shaky breaths.

“I don’t want an argument,” Rey said.

“No. Not this time,” he said, his voice husky and low. “I’ve told you what I think. My mother is using you.”

“Stop,” said Rey tiredly.

She continued to sit, watching the dull lights of the city outside. Traffic streamed by above and below her window. What Kylo saw, she couldn’t tell. He seemed exhausted. His breathing slowed and became deeper, and Rey’s heartbeat slowed too.

Hesitantly he leaned forward, gently wrapping his arms around her. Rey held completely still, her heart jumping. _He needs this._ When Kylo made no further move, she allowed herself to relax into the embrace, one cautious muscle at a time. Before she could consider what it all meant, Kylo was asleep, his cheek resting on the top of her head.

Of course it was impossible for Rey to follow him into sleep, sitting in the windowsill with him slumped against her, even if he weighed almost nothing as a Force projection. Yet the next thing she knew, it was morning, and she was waking up in her bed. She must have slept deeply, for she was well-rested. No sign of Kylo.

The fragments of another dream haunted her all day though, catching at Rey’s thoughts as she trotted after Leia and watched her pulling together the threads of her galaxy-wide political agreements. Some dream about Ahch-To and the big ocean-going ships the Caretakers sailed between the islands. Ancient technology. Someone threw an anchor overboard and Rey followed it as it sunk down and down into darkness that grew ever more profound. Slower and deeper, and Rey didn’t know whether she should hope or fear to see where it came to rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  Many readers say they distrust works-in-progress because there's always that nagging fear that the writer will lose inspiration, they'll lose interest, or the circumstances of their life will intrude and they'll be unable to finish.
> 
> This story has been the most difficult to write of any I've written: I'm certain it's there, it's complete, and I know the ending. Yet the details, each chapter, each step of the way is very hard to determine. Still, I know the way is there. My feet know where to walk even if my eyes don't see it.
> 
> In the past few weeks I've watched my father die: he had a long life with a lot of promise, far too much of it unfulfilled. 
> 
> It only makes me more determined to live fully, and for me, now, living fully means writing, and writing stubbornly no matter what.


	14. The Stables

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the fathier stables, Kylo meets Temiri Blagg
> 
> Trigger warning for addiction
> 
> \- - -

The fathier stables were a busy place in the mornings. When Kylo and Niney arrived, the tall wooden gates were open. Teams of workers were sweeping out the stalls, pitching in fresh straw and hosing down the central concourse. The fathiers themselves were being led out by heavy-set handlers or ridden by tiny jockeys who were, surprisingly, mostly human children. Their thin voices carried on the breeze from the nearby training fields, along with the drumming of hooves.

Kylo’s new acquisition was easy enough to find: it had to be the one standing miserably in a stall while a small human boy tended to one of its forelegs. Some kind of blue bacta cast lay splintered on the floor beside them. The boy was crooning to the animal and sponging down its leg. Kylo moved in for a closer look. He was no stranger to broken limbs; this one seemed to be healing cleanly, as far as he could tell through the fathier’s fur, which was growing back. A few raw patches showed where some surgical repairs had been done.

The fathier threw its head up in alarm at Kylo’s approach. The boy was forced to throw his whole strength into holding its injured leg off the ground. It seemed an unequal contest: the boy was tiny, and the fathier, even in its injured state, was corded with muscle. But the boy seemed to have a knack. His voice remained calm, his hands deft, patting dry the scar tissue.

“Hand me the bacta cast,” he said, without looking around.

Kylo gestured at Niney, who picked it up and gave it to the boy. The thing looked ruined, but the boy managed to find enough pieces to wrap it around the restless fathier’s leg and lock the whole mess together somehow. It clicked into a rigid form, and the fathier put its foot down with a gusty sigh of relief.

“Stop wasting time on that bloody thing!” said a voice behind them. “You’re supposed to be taking Chilla’s Hope out on the lunge rein.”

The voice belonged to a big Cloddogran dressed in a groom’s heavy leather tunic. He was holding a long whip in one of his four hands. Kylo couldn’t tell if his mangy hide was normal for Cloddograns; a fringe of warty, infected growths around his mouth added little to his charm.

The fathier’s ears went back and it reared up, striking at the air with its forelegs. When it came down again it danced on the spot, its hooves chopping angrily at the ground. Dancing Boy was well-named.

The boy turned round to answer without raising his eyes from the ground. “But Bargwill, Chilla’s Hope isn’t ready. She still needs to be yoked to the steadies or she’ll break away.”

“So find a way to control her, Blagg,” said the Cloddogran nastily. “I told her owner she didn’t have the breeding to be trained for the track. But there’s no use shouting at that bag of stupid, he wouldn’t listen. If Chilla’s Hope bolts into an electric fence, we’ll all be better off.”

“If someone gets trampled…” began the boy.

“Then they weren’t fast enough,” finished Bargwill, grinning. “You gotta be fast.” He lunged forward suddenly and brought the whip down across the boy’s arms, which he’d flung up to protect his face. There was nothing wrong with the boy’s reflexes. He threw the fathier’s halter rope at Bargwill and ran off before the whip could come down again. The Cloddogran snatched the rope out of the air and turned around to face Kylo. Kylo had met his type before: they were never ready for introductions until they’d made a little show of their cruelty. Proud of the scrap of power it gave them.

“What do you want?” he said.

“If that’s Dancing Boy, then I’m his new owner,” said Kylo.

Niney opened her cache and showed off the deed of ownership Kylo had won the previous night. The Cloddogran took it, pulled a miniscanner out of his pocket and waved it over the chip.

“Lucky you,” he said, looking up and eyeing Kylo’s ripped clothes with scorn. “This is Dancing Boy all right. It’s all he bloody well does.” He gave the halter rope a yank, and the fathier reared up and did its war dance again. “What do you call yourself, human?”

“Matt,” said Kylo. It was as good a name as any, and one he’d used recently.

“Well, Matt, this thing will race again in a month or so, if you can wait that long. Or you can chop it up for pies at the market, if you want a faster return on your investment.” Bargwill scrunched up the growths around his mouth in what might have been a sneer. It was some unattractive expression, anyway. Though it wasn’t a face built for much else.

“I’ll keep it.”

“I love an optimist,” said the Cloddogran flatly. “I’m Bargwill Tomder. Head groom.” He held out his lower left paw to shake. Niney shook it so Kylo didn’t have to. Lately she seemed to have appointed herself his mediator which was fine by him. The less Kylo had to engage with the world the better. Bargwill flattened his spiky ears, perhaps taking Niney’s gesture as an insult.

Just then a skinny red-headed child walked past dragging a hot air hose she’d been using to dry out the freshly-washed stalls. She unplugged it from a power socket next to Dancing Boy’s stall. Niney’s sensors narrowed as she focused on the power socket: it was one that would fit her charger. She gave a series of happy whoops in binary and scurried across to plug herself in.

Dancing Boy took one wild-eyed look at Niney and reared up so quickly that his lead rope whipped out of Bargwill’s paw. He shot out of the stall and cannoned into a white fathier that Blagg was leading past. It staggered, roared, regained its balance and spun around to snap at Dancing Boy.

“Chilla, no!” said Blagg, hanging on to the lead rope like grim death. The boy was in danger from Dancing Boy’s hooves, for the fathier was rearing up and striking at fathiers and stable hands alike. But Blagg seemed to care more about the animals than his own safety. “Dancing Boy, stop it! You can’t do that on a bacta splint!” he shouted.

Chilla’s Hope had had enough; she gave another roaring snort, bucked twice and bounded towards the outer gate, with Dancing Boy snapping at her heels. Blagg was still holding onto her lead rope.

“She’s going to kill him!” shrieked the red-haired girl. “Blagg, let go!”

Another quick-thinking urchin ran to a big button on the wall and hit it. The outer gate slammed down. Thwarted, Chilla’s Hope started running circuits of the inner court, bucking and plunging, with Dancing Boy right behind. Blagg seemed unable to let go, and even if he did, the flailing hooves of either fathier could finish him. He was tiny compared to the gigantic beasts.

Everyone was shouting and nobody was doing anything useful. As Dancing Boy thundered around in another circuit, his lead rope flicked past Kylo. He reached out to it. The Force made such things so easy that he barely questioned why it prompted him to do so. Suddenly the rope was in his hand, and now a tonne of furious muscle on the other end was pulling him around the courtyard in long flying strides.

_Use the Force._

A good suggestion, wherever it came from. Jedi mind tricks, interrogations, it was all the same: leaning into another’s mind. In this case, the mind of an animal wild with fear. That was familiar enough; Kylo had interrogated plenty of people who were so addled with terror that they were no use until he’d calmed them down. The technique was nothing Snoke had taught him; it was something he’d discovered for himself. He did it now; leaned into the fathier’s panic and wrapped it in a warm, cloying blanket of calm. “Come on,” he whispered. “You don’t want to do this. It’s so tiring.”

For a moment he was calm too, flying comfortably in the Force alongside the powerful fathier. It was exhilarating. Beside him, the fathier’s mind was a little scrambled dot in the Force. Kylo could reach it, pat it down, make it gentle. The Force was humming around him, blocking out the chaos of the stableyard. All except for the spark of another presence, another voice saying, “Soo, soo, quiet now girl.”

And then Kylo was standing outside Dancing Boy’s stall again and the creature was next to him, blowing great gusting breaths above him, but standing calmly. The rope was still in his hand. On the other side of the stableyard, Blagg was holding his fathier, who stood quietly now too. The boy looked across at Kylo for a moment, his dark eyes puzzled. Then he turned back to Chilla’s Hope and started kneading the big muscles in its forelegs, making soothing noises.

“Sar!” yelled Bargwill, calling over the red-haired girl. Yelling was the only thing Bargwill had contributed to the proceedings. “Sar, go roust out Orkut from whatever filthy hole he’s sleeping it off. If that fat Crolute’s not heavy enough to hold down Chilla’s Hope then I don’t know what is.” He turned to Blagg, who was still patting Chilla’s Hope. “You, clean some tack or something.” Bargwill stomped off without a further glance at Blagg or Kylo. Since the Force was still rolling powerfully around Kylo, he used it to lean into the Cloddogran’s mind too.

“I’lll be staying here too, which is _perfectly normal,”_ he suggested. Bargwill nodded.

Blagg passed by and stopped to pat Dancing Boy. It looked like an excuse to get a closer look at Kylo. Niney made a disgusted noise. “You’re very forgiving,” she told the boy. “Those things tried to kill you.”

“He only does that when he’s scared,” said Blagg, rubbing the fathier’s nose.

“What’s he scared of, besides astromech droids?” asked Kylo.

“Everything,” said the boy. He looked up at Kylo. “Thanks for what you did just now. He’s hard to calm down.” He ventured a smile. “How long have you worked with fathiers?”

“Never,” said Kylo shortly.

“I hate this place,” said Niney, picking wet straw off her body. “I hate animals, and I hate all this straw. It’s damp and fibrous and gets everywhere.”

“I’ve never seen one of those talk before,” said Blagg.

Niney clicked her claws at him impatiently.

“I’ll put Dancing Boy away,” said Blagg hastily. “You go on…”

                                                        

* * *

                                             

The doors of the Casino were closed to Kylo. One look at the bouncers’ faces told him that some time in the past few days he’d crossed through that invisible line between the elite and the underclass. His accent and his bearing had kept him abreast of their judgement for longer than most gamblers of unknown provenance. But he was barely surviving from win to win, and his time was up.

“Steal some better clothes,” suggested Niney.

“It’d take more than a wash and a decent suit to get me past them again,” said Kylo. Niney rocked on her gimbals, clearly skeptical. “It’s a human thing,” he told her. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Next his steps took him back to the Archway Market. He was hungry anyway. Niney scraped a couple of coins out of her cache and Kylo bought some meat pies from one of the stalls.

“That’ll put hairs on your chest,” grinned the pie-seller, a dumpy flightless Toydarian who seemed to have suffered some accident in the past. “That’s Bonadan Prospect you’ve got there. Won the Corporate Sector Cup three years running.”

“Don’t listen to him,” said a voice at Kylo’s elbow. Teezia’s mother had come pecking around the stall, flicking wrappers and other rubbish into her trashcart. “Winners are terrible hard on your teeth.”

Kylo took a bite. “Doellin’s tits, this is tough!”

Teezia’s mother cackled. But her eyes remained fixed on the paper package in Kylo’s hands. Stringy or not, the pies gave off a rich, savoury steam. Kylo stuffed the remains of his pie in his mouth and handed her the rest. “This time finish it before some thug takes it,” he said.

“Bread’s easier to eat. Lovely bread. You were so very kind, the other day…” she said pleadingly. She looked worse than ever; the skin of her arms was scabby all over.

“Well I haven’t got any money for bread _now!”_ he growled.

“And the Casino won’t let him back inside to win more,” put in Niney. She extruded a drill bit and buzzed it threateningly near the old woman’s ankle.

“There’s usually a sabacc game under the boardwalk by the industrial dock,” said Teezia’s mother, backing away. “If you have money for the pot.”

Niney put out a claw and tugged at Kylo’s pants cuff. He shrugged at Teezia’s mother and followed Niney out of the market. She stopped at a random spot in a cobbled street near the spaceport, reached her skinny pincers into a crack in the stone wall of an old building, and pulled out a golden aurei. “Here,” she said.

“How many of these hiding places have you got?” he asked.

“A simple ‘thank you’ would suffice,” said Niney.

Kylo’s eyebrows went up. Niney had had a mind of her own for as long as he’d known her, but avoiding a direct question was new. “Thanks,” he said, his lips twisting with amusement. He set off for the industrial dock, but after a few steps he stopped. Niney wasn’t following. “What?”

“Under the boardwalk sounds damp and horrible. I’m more useful keeping watch at the landing field.”

Kylo shrugged. “Meet you back at the stables then.” He ignored Niney’s reply in binary, which sounded suspiciously like, “If you’re lucky”.

The sabacc game put Kylo in a worse mood. The space under the boardwalk was, as Niney had guessed, slimy and dark. It smelt of rotting seaweed. The mixed crowd gambling there were exactly the same kind of losers and roughnecks that his father used to play with. Their banter and bravado were depressingly familiar. Kylo elbowed his way into the circle, threw his aurei into the pot and played silently until he’d won it back and quadrupled it. He left amid mutters of “wanker,” and “arsehole”.

“Win it back off me tomorrow,” he threw back over his shoulder. “I’ll give you a chance.”

Unsurprisingly, not fifty steps from the sabacc game there was a Weequay youth swaddled in thick pelts, selling drugs. An old battle droid loomed menacingly at his shoulder. “Looks like this is my one-stop shop for everything,” Kylo said briefly. “What have you got?”

“Slick,” said the Weequay, opening his outer coat and pulling open a pocket to show Kylo a some vials of a sticky dark-brown liquid. “Five peggats and and a trugut.”

Kylo flicked him the coins and went back to the fathier stables, which seemed like a haven of comfort by comparison.

                                                                                                     

* * *

 

Dancing Boy’s stall was not a bad place to sleep, overall, once Kylo got used to how he shifted his weight from foot to foot or snorted softly at things only he could hear.

“Don’t worry, he’ll never step on you. Not now you’ve gentled him,” Blagg told him, looking in through the half-door, which was ajar. “I’ve slept in here a lot myself.”

“He won’t get me back for stopping him when he was running around the courtyard?”

“You did something to take away his fear. He hates being afraid. He hates himself for being afraid, and he’s grateful you could stop it,” said Blagg. “He’ll watch out for you now. While you sleep.”

“The fathiers talk to you, do they?” asked Kylo.

The boy did not answer, but one of the other stablehands, Zaya, piped up as he passed by with an armload of halters. “Sure they talk to Temiri.”

Kylo caught Blagg studying his face. Against a fathier, even Kylo’s size and strength were not enough to explain how he’d pulled Dancing Boy out of his panic. Though if it came to that, Temiri Blagg’s experience and his gentle voice were not enough to explain how he’d done the same to Chilla’s Hope.

* * *

 

                                                                                                      
Kylo’s days quickly fell into a new pattern. He was woken every morning by the stablehands sweeping and hosing out the fathier stalls, and by Niney’s angry squeals threatening to electrocute everyone if she got wet. Niney generally left to watch the landing field for Teezia and Tuaua’s return. If Kylo’s head didn’t ache too much, he helped take the fathiers out to train. Bargwill gave an occasional grudging nod of approval, but otherwise acted as though Kylo were invisible, which suited him fine. The child stablehands and jockeys were not so lucky; if Bargwill couldn’t find anything to punish them for, he’d make something up. Not a day passed without him laying into them with his whip and his feet. Some children yelped with pain; Blagg was one of the ones who stifled their cries by clamping their teeth down on their wrists until they bled. Kylo’s fingers unconsciously strayed to his own wrists, rubbing at half-moon marks that had faded away years ago.

Away from the stableyard, Kylo could watch the fathiers loping in easy circles on their lunge ropes, or thundering around the long oval training course. The mindless activity was soothing. Dancing Boy’s injury was healing and Blagg said Kylo should take him out to stretch his legs too, but only under close watch. “He’s one of the ones that got out when the…” Blagg stopped short and gave Kylo an almost-afraid look, then checked whether anyone else was near them. His voice dropped. “When the Resistance visited,” he finished. “That’s when he broke his leg. He’d like to get out again if he could.” Dancing Boy arched his neck and Blagg scratched his nose while sneaking sidelong glances at Kylo. Kylo said nothing.

If he had any money left, Kylo would go to the Archway Market to buy food. Teezia’s mother would somehow contrive to come past him while he was eating, and he’d give her something to make her go away. After a week or so she started babbling something about Niney, who was clearly visiting behind Kylo's back. “That droid of yours is touched by some grace, some heavenly uplift of mercy…” the old woman told him cringingly. “She remembers I like bread rolls. Don’t let her hurt me…”

“We just want that lightsaber back,” said Kylo, sighing.

After the market, Kylo would join the sabacc game under the boardwalk, or in whatever dank corner it moved to when the westerly gales made their usual spot too wet. After a rocky start, the regulars found him no more unpleasant than themselves, and accepted his presence without comment. Kylo played silently, bored by the ease with which the Force kept him in funds. The only cost was the sheer repulsiveness of the company he had to keep. Luckily the means to wash his memory clean was readily available, in bottled form and at a reasonable price.  
                                                                                                    

* * *

 

“Jedi!”

It was the only word Kylo could understand from the sing-song narrative going on in the next stall. Blagg was quite a storyteller; his voice rose and fell in the cadence of one who knew how to hold an audience. Most nights, as Kylo was leaving to score whatever negotiable enlightenment the streets of Canto Bight could offer, the stablehands would be gathered in one of the other stalls. Their work finished, they’d share what little food Bargwill had given them, and play with little dolls made of scraps and straw. They told stories, and the dolls battled with swords made of nails and wire.

“Jedi,” he heard again. Kylo shook his head, trying to pull himself out of the glitterstim haze. He hadn’t paid much attention to what the children played. The stablehands didn’t speak Basic amongst themselves. But this particular night, Kylo had scored early and come back to the stables while Blagg was still telling his story. Kylo, already afloat on a comforting tide of glitterstim, had leaned his head against the wall to listen. Blagg’s voice was mesmerising. Then that one word popped out of the stream of foreign language again like a finger flicked against his ear. “Jedi.” This time there was an appreciative stir from the listening children. “Something something something the Resistance,” Kylo heard.

He got up silently. Dancing Boy’s head shot up immediately. Then he recognised Kylo and arched his neck to snuffle softly around his neck and chest. Kylo patted him clumsily, his fingers sinking into the astonishing softness of his thick grey fur. Then he backed away, conscious that those liquid eyes and velvety ears were not too far from a solid set of teeth. Turning, he caught hold of the hinges of the half-door and used them to boost himself out of the stall. It was quieter than activating the automatic door release.

The next stall was empty except for the three stable hands and a little girl called Tack, presumably because she was too small to do anything except polish tack. Blagg and the red-headed girl, Sar, each had a doll. They were making them circle each other and clash their nail swords together as Blagg told their story. Kylo held very still, watching from the shadows outside the stall.

Tack had a new doll, dressed in bright scraps of colour - offcuts from the Kidron silk vests the jockeys wore when they raced. This doll also had hair - some kind of long fur braided and coiled into an elaborate headpiece. “The little queen,” she said in Basic, holding up her doll to the others. She poked at its hairdo and gave a satisfied smile before placing it between the duelling dolls. Blagg objected and made his doll lunge at the other swordsman, the black one. Kylo felt a slow drumbeat of rage start up in his chest. He’d heard the children chattering with excitement about the Resistance broadcasts, in fact they took great risks to sneak away and watch each new one. It was obvious who those dolls were, obvious what the children had been playing right under his very nose for weeks. Those nails they held were not swords, but —

He clenched his fists, ready to step forward and end the mockery.

“But the little queen will tell them 'no!'” burst out Tack, who only spoke Basic. She placed her doll firmly in front of Blagg's.

“They won’t listen,” said Blagg, switching to Basic himself.

“They will have to listen. She is a Skywalker.”

“She is not! She’s nothing!” said Blagg.

Tack shook her head vehemently. “She _has_ to be a Skywalker!” She glared at Blagg, her eyes starting to swim with tears.

Sar lent over and patted her on the hand. “No, Temiri’s right. It’s better if she’s not. Then she’s one of us. She’ll fight for us, see?”

Kylo squinted at Tack’s doll. Impossible to tell whether it was meant to be Rey or Leia, in their cock-eyed version of events.

“No, Luke will kill Kylo,” asserted Blagg, who clearly had his favourites. He pushed his sand-coloured doll past the “little queen”.

“Luke Skywalker is a _coward!”_ said Kylo, stepping into the stall in one long stride. The children threw themselves backwards into the corners with the speed of instinct.

“He is not!” screamed Tack, crying. Kylo rounded on her. Sar grabbed her hand and pulled her away.

“He is, and you ignorant little pieces of–” Kylo began, raising his fist. Sar shrieked and Tack started to wail. “You’re so in love with this Resistance that’s never done anything for you,” he continued furiously.

“Rey will lead us to freedom…” started Tack.

“No, _Luke_ will…” interrupted Blagg, his face ablaze with defiance. “He’s got the Force on his side!”

 _“He_ won’t risk his precious skin for you or anyone,” snarled Kylo. “Because that’s how the Resistance works. They send innocents - like you - into danger!” The child’s stupid faith rubbed Kylo raw. He’d been like that once, so sure that the Force would take care of everything. That it had given him some special destiny that could heal the world. It would have been better if he’d had that hope beaten out of him earlier rather than later.

“What would you know?” yelled Blagg.

Kylo took hold of a broom leaning on the wall beside him and slashed it back and forth, feeling its weight. He could let the dark take him now, and show these children what the Force really did.

Blagg gave a kind of gasp. His gaze travelled between Kylo, twirling the broom one-handed, and the black-robed doll in his hand. “You’re _him!”_ Blagg hissed, his eyes widening with fear. Yet he stepped forward to put himself between Kylo and the other children. He stretched his arm out, and one of the pitchforks behind Kylo flew past him, into the boy’s hand.

“I should have known,” said Kylo, nodding. “What a coincidence.” It was almost funny, how the Force chose to send its messages at times like this. As enigmatic and useless as always.

Then Blagg was attacking him, and there was no mistaking the way the Force flowed around him, guiding his moves and goosing his luck. Kylo laughed bitterly, and drew on the Force himself. This was old, old territory for him, and even with the haze that glitterstim cast over his mind, he fell into the rhythm of it. He’d spent half his life doing this, sparring with young Force users, assessing their potentialt, honing his skills as he improved theirs. Faced with an opponent half his size, he couldn’t help himself. Almost as quickly as it had come, Kylo’s anger drained away and he slid into the discipline of testing an opponent.

Blagg’s style reminded him of Rey: obviously untrained, but with quick reflexes and enough imagination to make use of opportunities others would not even see. The boy moved twice as much as he needed to, dancing randomly around Kylo in an effort to mask his intentions. It probably worked well on opponents who didn’t also have the Force. Kylo parried his blows easily, but he was impressed. Despite the boy’s skinny arms, his gift was channeling enough power to make the broom jump in Kylo’s hands with the impact of his strikes. The wooden handles of their tools clacked and scraped loudly as they connected, drawing gasps of alarm from the other children who were pressed up against the back wall, wide-eyed.

Kylo disarmed Blagg with a twist that flung his pitchfork to the far corner. Before anyone else could pick it up, Kylo used the Force to bring it flying into his hand. Blagg watched him, open-mouthed.

“So now you know,” said Kylo. He took his hand away from the pitchfork and it hovered in the air in front of him.

The boy shook his head, too stunned to speak. The Force hummed with tension: the boy strained between his hunger for knowledge and his fear of what Kylo might show him.

“You serve the dark side,” he whispered eventually, and waited to see what Kylo would do to him.

“Not any more,” said Kylo. “I serve myself.” And as he said it, the words seemed to loosen the thing that had been digging its claws into his soul for as long as he could remember. He twirled the broom in his right hand, reversing it in a figure eight, then sent it flying back to its station against the wall. A sudden smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, surprising him. “Things have changed since they made that holocast of the battle on Crait. I don’t follow the First Order. I’m my own master now.”

“You’re on the run from the First Order,” said the boy.

“And the Resistance,” said Kylo, and watched the boy think it over. “So what are you going to do about it?” he prompted. “You have a gift, you know. And I can teach you how to use it. But not if I’m in prison.”

“A gift,” said the boy slowly. Behind him, the other children were exchanging satisfied nods. They, too, must have guessed, must have seen Temiri Blagg do things that weren’t possible for normal people. The boy gulped. “I thought….I didn’t believe I could really…” He was shaking, trying to hold back tears. Kylo knew how he felt; he’d been about the same age when Snoke had thrown open the doors of his secret kingdom and told him all its magic would be his to rule some day. That the present misery would end, that it had in fact been unnecessary. The boy was taking it pretty well, considering.

“I need to talk to the others,” said Blagg. Kylo stepped back out of the stall and let the children confer. Blagg came out a moment later. Looking down at Blagg’s face, all ablaze with fear and curiosity and hope, Kylo knew his answer already.

“Your secrets are safe with us,” Blagg said. “Teach me what you know.”

Between drawing breath to answer and speaking, Kylo felt the Force touch him, and his one quick breath filled him with all the clarity of a long meditation. “I will not teach you what I know,” he said gravely.

The boy’s eyes narrowed angrily. “Don’t cheat me just because I’m smaller than you!”

Kylo held up one finger to silence him. “No. I won’t teach you what I know because I know things that nobody should have to learn. I will teach you what you want to learn.”

The boy drew a breath, considering. Then he dipped his head, and the tension flowed out of him. “I misjudged you,” he said softly.

“You wouldn’t be the first,” said Kylo, laughing softly. He went back to Dancing Boy’s stall and rolled himself up in a saddle blanket to sleep in the straw. For the first time in months his dreams were casual, almost friendly, even though they featured Luke.

“Don’t copy anything I did or Snoke did and you might make a good teacher,” said dream-Luke, who seemed to be reclining on a rock shelf somewhere grey and foggy. For once, Luke’s presence didn’t bother him.

“Like Rey, he’s already had the best teacher there is,” said Kylo. “Survival.” In his dream, he smiled. Having other lives to consider besides his own was new. He could grow to like it.

 

* * *

 

 


	15. Niney's' Had Enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke makes good on his threat. "If you strike me down in anger, I'll always be with you..."
> 
> Kylo's Force bond with Rey is a solace and a torment
> 
> Either way, Niney's had enough of watching Kylo shout at ghosts
> 
> \- - -

The weather turned cold. Fathiers had a fast metabolism; it was enough for Kylo to wrap himself in straw and Dancing Boy would do the rest, pumping out heat like a giant organic radiator. Elsewhere in Canto Bight the homeless were not so lucky; Kylo saw them in the market in the mornings, grey with cold, faces drawn with exhaustion after a night of pacing the city streets to keep from freezing.

Freezing or not, Temiri Blagg would come to Kylo in the dark before sunrise and learn the first steps to mastering the power he had. For every question the boy asked, Kylo gave him answers from both the Jedi way and from the teachings of the Sith, and let him choose between them. The boy drank in the knowledge but used it cautiously, testing every step of his path. 

There were children in Canto Bight besides the stablehands. They ran down the streets in a screeching mob and played games in the blustery winds. They clustered around the market, looking for food. One stall had put up a holonet screen, and that attracted them too. Kylo would see the stablehands among them, cheering when the ex-stormtrooper appeared, or pointing up at Leia’s face. If she was playing at being the galaxy’s mother, these children certainly believed it. “I love her,” said the red-headed stablehand, Sar. And she’d hold up her fist to Blagg or Zaya in what they believed was a secret signal. “The Resistance!”

It was so strange to hear his mother’s low, slightly creaky voice playing on the street holoscreens. If Blagg was there he would hush the other children and Kylo would have to hear his mother speak. He would try not to look, but the Resistance holocasts were everywhere. Any corner he turned, he might be confronted by that dark gaze that seemed to look straight into him, sad and determined.

The holocasts showed Rey following Leia at two paces, or waiting by her shoulder as she signed a treaty or argued a point in the fragile new galactic Senate she was building. Her presence was never explained. She simply stood, feet apart, face inscrutable, holding just her staff; there was no lightsaber hanging at her hip. Kylo always checked.

“Get a life,” he muttered to the onscreen Rey one night as he was weaving his way back from a late night of sabacc. A moment later he caught a sense of her in the Force. She was with him! He pointed up at the screen Rey with the bottle in his hand. “What are you doing there, Rey? Look at you, following my mother around like a baby bird. Get a life!”

“What, like you?” Even without seeing her, the curl in her lip was manifest.

He shrugged, held up his bottle again. “At least I go out at night. Meet people. Parties.”

“Parties with fathiers,” she said drily.

Kylo winced. So the Force had shown her where he slept. He waited for her pity or contempt, but instead her voice was almost sympathetic. “I’ve slept in worse.”

Sometimes he’d be lying in Dancing Boy’s stall, his head pillowed on an old saddle, and Rey would appear. She might be in a shimmering grey gown, accepting something from an unseen companion; some drink in a tall, elegant glass. Or he’d see her with her hair done up in complex loops, her face made up with cosmetics into crisp new lines. It made her smile harder, more sharp edged. Aimed at who? Kylo would rather drink until he blacked out than see that. She had never, ever smiled at him in real life. He’d only seen her crying or angry. What sort of a person did that make him? Even so, her face softened when she saw him in the Force bond that still linked them, however tenuously.

She paused once from her work in front of a mirror where she stood pulling hanks of hair impatiently into some new fashion. “I don’t want any of this. Kylo, I wish you were here.”

“Nobody at all wishes that, besides you. Certainly not me.”

Her hair looked so soft. If he’d really been there, he’d have lifted it gently into the headpiece that was meant to hold it in position. She might have leaned her head against his hand while he pinned it in place. If she’d come with him when he asked, this could have been their everyday routine _. A domestic moment between the leaders of the First Order._

She dithered about her next question. He waited. It was going to be something sappy and caring, because she had the luxury of looking down on him with sympathy. _Poor Kylo, the man she’d refused. It had ruined him._  

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

“Are you hungry?” he mimicked viciously. “‘Are you getting enough to eat? Go put something warm on!’ Are we playing families now? Is that what Leia’s teaching you? Tell her it’s about thirty years too late.”

Rey’s presence went out like a candle, and Kylo was left alone in the musty dark of his stall.

“What in the seven Corellian hells are you doing?” hissed Niney. She was sulking by her power point as usual. “Talking to the dark. Would you _look_ at yourself!”

“Hand me that bottle and shut up, droid,” said Kylo.

Niney warbled a long, insulting-sounding screel in binary and did as he said. Dancing Boy woke with a start and lifted one enormous hoof. He held it over Niney, raking the air gently as though trying to decide whether to stomp on her or kick her. Kylo put his head in his hands. “Stop it, both of you.”

Dancing Boy lowered his hoof and gave Niney a derisory snort.

Kylo took a swig of the liquor. It burned down his throat. Good pain, good against the cold of a stormy night in a draughty stable. He waved the bottle at Niney. “All through history, great Force users have arisen from nowhere,” he said, his tongue turning thick as his head became lighter. “Dark side or light, the greatest of them spent time alone, learning about the Force through their own inquiries. Not from _teachers_ who just _repeated_ what they’d been _told.”_

“I bet they didn’t drink themselves stupid every night,” said Niney. And without another word, she reached up with her slicing arm and buzzed open the door to the stall. A moment later she was gone. Dancing Boy stared after her, head high and ears flattened. He took a step towards the open door.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” said Kylo, patting the halter rope that kept Dancing Boy tied to a ring in the wall. He threw an empty bottle at the door switch and the door thumped shut again.

“You’re not wrong,” said a voice Kylo hoped never to hear again. The air was suddenly charged with the Force, and with something else: a quiet, listening presence. The hair on Kylo’s arms stood up. He looked around the dim stall, but there was nothing to see except the fathier, head drooping again towards sleep.

Or maybe….maybe that shape in the corner was more than just a shadow cast by the tack hanging on the wall. It was quite possibly a man in a robe, a bearded man.

“I’ve been waiting for you to show up,” said Kylo tiredly. It was true; Luke’s last threat had hung over him for weeks now. Every decision Kylo made, every door he walked through, he’d half expected to see Luke’s taunting figure on the other side. It was almost a relief to have him finally appear.

“Famous last words, and all that,” said Luke dryly.

 _Last words?_ If Kylo squinted into the dark, he could almost make out the gleam of Luke’s eyes, but not much else. He had none of the solidity he’d had on Crait. This was no Force projection. 

 _Of course._ The knowledge of Luke’s death sunk in and immediately felt like something he’d always known. He hadn’t wanted to know. Such a dry and tasteless victory, after all that shouting and saberplay.

“What took you so long?” Kylo said at last.

Luke chuckled softly, and Kylo had to bite back his reflexive rage. Typical of Luke to laugh when everything was so hopeless. His own nephew, the hope of the galaxy, grovelling in a dark stable. The commander of exactly one droid and some children.

“Glad you think this is funny.”

“Well, no. Death is funnier than I expected though. I’m not in control of how the Force brings my consciousness back. Sometimes I’m moss or lichen, which is very poetic. Or a seabird, which is nice. Sometimes I’m a porg. They all ate some part of my body.”

“What are porgs?” asked Kylo.

“Ahch-To creatures.”

“I’m glad we’re having this conversation. It must be important,” said Kylo sarcastically. Though it was a struggle to hold on to his sense of outrage. Hating Luke had become a tiring habit. Or maybe so much glitterstim and alcohol made every emotion too tiring. It was one of the great virtues of his new lifestyle.

“You weren’t ready to hear me before now,” said Luke. “And that was always the problem, wasn’t it? Nobody ever listened. Nobody listened to you when you were a boy, and afraid of the powers you had and the way they set you apart. Nobody ever listened to Anakin when he was a boy, lonely and angry at the injustice he saw all around him. The best the Jedi masters could do was to withdraw and meditate on what they’d done wrong: Yoda in his swamp on Dagobah, me on my island at the end of the galaxy. We sat there alone, quizzing the Force for answers. But the Force is not a person. It won’t give answers on a human scale.”

“As far as I can see, you’re still the one doing all the talking,” said Kylo.

“And I’m nearly done with it. I just came to say, ‘Listen’. You’re already doing it. You’re on the right path.”

“I’ll drink to that,” said Kylo, lifting his bottle. “If you’re telling me the path to enlightenment is at the bottom of this bottle.”

“You’re living among the damned, Kylo. The hopeless and the downtrodden. Who else in the history of the Force ever did that, once they came into their power?”

Kylo shrugged and took another swig from his bottle. The alcohol was not having the numbing effect he’d have preferred. Luke’s image wavered, doubled, then steadied.

“Not Rey,” he said thickly. “Poster girl for the Resistance, now. The darling of Warlentta’s rich and well-dressed. Gold slippers and diamond necklaces.” The fact that Snoke had also favoured gold slippers suddenly struck Kylo as hilarious. His old master, so vain and so ugly.

“I don’t know what Rey’s doing,” said Luke stiffly through Kylo’s snorts of laughter. “But you, Kylo. You’re here, now. And these are the people your mother fought for all her life.”

Kylo steadied himself. “It was a bit theoretical for her, though, wasn’t it? She never lived with them, did she?” he said bitterly. Though, what was there to be bitter about? Life had thrust her on one path, and she’d worked with the advantages she’d been given.

Luke nodded, as though hearing his thoughts. “Your grandfather did,” said Luke. He waved at Kylo’s surroundings. “He began life in a place like this. But then he forgot.”

“Because he had better things to do. And so do I!” said Kylo. “You think I’m going to sit in the shadows forever? I believe in the Force. The Force will tell me when it is my time to rise again.”

“I know,” said Luke. Instead of his usual skepticism, he was nodding, as though Kylo had made perfect sense. Or as though Kylo actually believed his own words.

Luke’s face was more clearly visible now. Kylo knew that patient expression. He’d once mistaken it for dullness. Not any more.

“Darth Vader forgot,” Luke went on. “He woke up every morning, put on his rage like he put on his armour, and that’s how he got through his days. And it was always about him. _His_ losses. _His_ mother. _His_ wife. And then the Emperor tried to take _his_ son.”

A spike of anger drove through the soft edges of Kylo’s mind. Was Luke going to take every comfort away? Darth Vader was their ancestor. Proud, fearless, committed to his cause. An ideal that had given Kylo strength when he was afraid. It was Darth Vader’s image he’d held onto while he sank his teeth into his own arm to stop himself crying out in pain.

“He was a symbol to millions,” spat Kylo. “And how would you know him so well, anyway? How often did you talk to him?”

“I’ve spoken to him more in the afterlife,” said Luke quietly. “I wanted to get to know him better.” He shook his head, and his face creased in a rueful smile, sweet and sad. “We don’t get on. I prefer the lichen, to be honest.”

Kylo hurled his empty bottle at Luke’s shade and it exploded against the wall in stars of glass, sharp and shocking. “Everything is such a kriffing joke to you!”

“Well, I have a different perspective now.” Luke stood up. He was fading into a watery shadow. “He never ruled, you know. He always served one master or another. He only knew freedom in the last few minutes of his life.”

Then there were only the bare stones of the wall behind him.

                                                                       

* * *

                             

There was no sign of Niney the next morning. Kylo asked Teezia’s mother about the droid when he went to the market, but she hadn’t seen her either. “Maybe somebody took her. Such an independent and intelligent droid must be worth a lot of money,” she said.

“They’ll be sorry soon enough,” said Kylo, and immediately regretted it. Niney had never had any reason to throw her lot in with him, yet she’d gone well beyond her programming in order to serve him. The only surprise was that she’d taken so long to decide that following Kylo was a dead end. She’d made her feelings about living in a stable clear enough.

He asked after Niney at the landing field, but nobody had seen her. Days passed, and he had to accept Niney was really gone. Her absence left a surprisingly large hole in his life. Her sardonic presence had suited him, even amused him sometimes.

Training Temiri Blagg made up for it in a small way; the other stablehands watched their training sessions, and altogether they made for friendly and undemanding company. Kylo might have felt old compared to them; but although they were young and hopeful, they were not naive. Sometimes, watching them working to the point of exhaustion under Bargwill’s blows and insults, Kylo imagined a younger Rey in their place. It wasn’t difficult. The same cruelties had tempered them all.

She appeared to him once at the market when Kylo was eating fried grubs on the Archway steps. She was as clear as the sunlight on the stones in front of him. She might have been in her private quarters, dressed casually for once in a loose white shift. Behind her he could make out the ghost of a bed with the bright folds of an extravagant dress thrown across it. Or perhaps it was just one of the market stalls selling coloured racing silks. Kylo watched her in silence. When he’d seen her last, her skin had had a golden cast from the sun, and she’d been freckled and rosy with life. Now she was pale. Slowly she became aware of Kylo, and the Force hummed between them with the light touch of her curiosity. She stared round, apparently able to see Kylo’s surroundings. Her face regained some of the child-like enthusiasm that had been so notably absent in their recent conversations.“We didn’t have markets like this on Jakku.”

“I’m sure they have them on Warlentta.”

“I can’t just wander about. I have responsibilities.” He’d never heard her voice sound so defeated.

“Why are you so sad?”

She sat staring out at the market, lost in thought. He thought she wasn’t going to answer, but then she said, “We’re not fixing anything. Look at that. It still goes on.”

She was watching two of Canto Bight's small street urchins trailing behind a hovercar. The adults in the car were buying trinkets from one of the stalls. A rich family, taking in the local colour. There was a very pretty girl sitting sitting with her legs dangling over the back, eating pastries from a bag. Her lekku were wound about with jewelled cords. She smiled, held out a bag of little fried pastries. She said something, and the children began to jump. “Higher!” laughed the girl, holding out the pastries just above their reach. “I’ll give one to the winner!” The two children jumped in desperate competition. Still laughing, the Twi’lek girl pointed to one of the children and clapped. The winner held out her hands, and the loser began to wail. The Twi’lek girl took out a pastry. Smiling, her eyes fixed on the winner, she very deliberately put it into her own mouth instead. She laughed wildly, spitting crumbs in their faces.

Rey growled. “If I were really in Canto Bight right now…” she said.

The tremor in her voice set off something in Kylo’s head. It was like when he was a child, and the Force would rise up in him and lash out unbidden. Suddenly the family’s hovercar lurched off-kilter, one of its repulsorlifts sparking. Rey gasped. Kylo walked over and used the Force again to jerk the remaining pastries from the girl’s hand while the family were busy yelling about the hovercar’s sudden failure. A crowd was gathering, the two beggar children in the middle of it screaming at their tormentor. Kylo passed by, casually pressing the pastries into their hands without looking at them.

He turned around to find Rey already beside him. She was looking up at him with an expression he’d never seen on her face before. How little he knew her! This was _her,_ looking up at _him,_ delighted, mischievous. Happiness did something incredible to her eyes, and he responded with a smile, slow and almost painful in its unfamiliarity.

Just then Teezia’s mother came doddering up to Kylo. Though she wasn’t exactly doddering any more; she looked a bit more spry than usual.

“Thank you, thank you!” she cried, crouching down in front of Kylo. She seemed about to kiss his feet. “I knew you were a good man!” Her arms seemed less scabby than usual, but Kylo still didn’t want them hugging his knees. He backed away, looking around for Rey. She was no longer visible, but she was still _there._ Puzzled by the scene, and amused by Kylo’s discomfort.

“It was nothing,” he said. “I mean, it was an injustice…I didn’t like it…”

“And you did something! How many can say that?” said Teezia’s mother warmly. “I could dance,” she said, and took a few quick steps around Kylo. Maybe not dancing, but rather less stiff than she had been.

“Fine. I’m glad,” said Kylo hurriedly.

“Were those streetkids hers?” asked Rey. “Grandkids or something?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know how many kids she has.”

“Well, you made them happy,” said Rey. She sounded wistful. He wanted to see that other look on her face again, the one that made her eyes sparkle. But she was already fading, the Force bond between them unravelling. Then she was gone.

Suddenly the sky above the city darkened. There was a collective gasp from the people in the market, and then a babble of fearful voices. Kylo didn’t need to look: the sound of a Star Destroyer materialising above him was unmistakeable. Next to him, Teezia’s mother looked up. The movement pulled the skin of her face tight, revealing the ghost of a beautiful and more forceful woman. “They won’t land right away,” she announced, her voice taking on a distinct, educated accent. A few faces turned to listen to her. “They’ve done this before. The Countess reminds them how bad these visits are for business. The First Order can’t afford to alienate Canto Bight. They’re not minting their own currency yet.”

“So they’ll have to negotiate before they land?” asked Kylo. He’d been on the other end of those negotiations, or at any rate, dozed under his helmet through Hux’s recounting of them.

“Yes. It’s a bad business,” said Teezia’s mother, losing her focus. “Bad, bad, bad. A bad season for us all,” she said vaguely, and tottered off. 

_I have to get out!_

The Star Destroyer hung above Canto Bight like a bad moon that refused to set. Anything leaving Canto Bight now would be searched. 

The crowd around Kylo was jostling him, hurrying to get under cover. He joined the stream of people leaving the market and jogged towards the fathier stables. If he had to hide, it wasn't the worst place. He would have to use the Force on a few people to keep them quiet...He ran through the list of people who knew him as anything other than the hopeless drifter “Matt”. The stablehands knew who Kylo was, but they hated the First Order. Teezia’s mother had felt him use the Force, but he doubted any stormtroopers would get much out of her. Paw Paw Teng probably suspected something, but his workshop was shut, and he was almost certainly off-planet.

 _Paw Paw Teng._ No doubt the stolen Novasword had triggered some datafile when he sold it to the junk traders. Registered as part of the Finalizer’s equipment and last seen with Kylo Ren. No wonder the First Order had come hunting.

Who else knew he was Kylo Ren?

As he reached the fathier stables the sky above the city filled with the whine of troop carriers descending. Teezia's mother had been wrong: they were sending in the stormtroopers already. Kylo swore softly under his breath. The streets were emptying, and he was out of time.

 

 

                                                                                                    

                                                                                                    


	16. Droid Crimes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A droid is always exactly where a droid is meant to be. Unless that droid is Niney.
> 
>  
> 
> \- - -

This was the life. Straight grey corridors, lots of shiny hard surfaces, and everything spotlessly clean. Niney was an astromech droid; spaceships were her natural element. What a relief to get away from that wretched hole Kylo fetched up in.

With no irritating cobblestones or foul straw, Niney could really move, and she took every advantage of it. She shot down the long main gallery that led to the aft port engineering section at top speed, almost clipping a few stormtroopers on the way. In the First Order, alertness was important. If Niney’s breakneck course made a few of them dance out of the way, it was surely to their benefit. _Dozy on duty wins no promotions_ , as their mess-hall motivational posters would remind them.

Niney slowed, however, when a squad of battle droids came striding along. Niney recognised them as a new model since she’d last been on board a Star Destroyer. They’d been the subject of much heated discussion in both droid and human circles. Pausing, Niney took in the swift economy of their movements, the pleasingly balanced curves of their breastplates. Their outer integuments gleamed with recent factory polish. They were fine. Very fine indeed.

It was tempting to follow them just to get a rear view, but Niney had things to do and places to go. The disassembly labs on this Star Destroyer, for instance. They were much like the ones on the _Finalizer_ , which was the beauty of mass production. One always knew where everything was, and in the First Order, everything was where it should be.

Unless the thing in question was Niney, of course. She’d smuggled herself aboard easily because people assumed she was exactly where she should be. She’d allowed herself to be stolen from the landing field at Canto Bight, escaped her new owner when it docked at a space station, and simply rolled onto a troop carrier heading back to its mother ship, the _Exterminator._ So long as she didn’t hook into the ship’s recharging ports - and she intended to swap in fresh batteries, so she didn’t need to - the ship’s systems wouldn’t detect an unfamiliar droid. As for the humans…as far as they knew, a droid was always exactly where it was meant to be.

The _Exterminator’s_ humans looked harried. Judging by the low traffic in the corridors, this Star Destroyer was badly undermanned. When Niney got to the disassembly lab, she was staggered by the amount of wreckage piled up in all the bays. The few technicians on duty moved slowly or sat with their heads propped on their hands over their workbenches; many of them sported bacta patches. That tended to happen when a crew was tired and rushed. Niney had been on a Star Destroyer before when crews were retrieving machinery after a battle, or during military actions. They got careless, and accidents happened. If this Star Destroyer had seen action lately then they’d all been pulling double shifts.

Niney rolled silently past the technicians, blessing the _Exterminator’s_ smooth surfaces once more. It really lent itself to stealth. She made her way to the back, where the droid reprogramming lab was. The chip store was a mess - neural processor chips spilled everywhere, some of them taped to pieces of flimsy with cryptic handscribbled notes. “Maths function Astromech G - K maybe OK?” or “Din5-R not checked”. Niney didn’t need to read the notes - she could scan them. There was a drawer for navcomp processors, and luckily there were some that would fit the 9-E models. She laid a few out on the floor in front of her as though intending to choose between them. If anyone came in here, there was her excuse: she was fetching pieces to get herself repaired. _What a clever droid!_

For a brief moment she was actually tempted to reinstall an upgraded BB-9E navcomp chip. It was in perfect condition! But astrogation had never interested her as much as it should. And after all, she’d survived weeks in Kylo Ren’s company without her navigational processors, including during that mad flight from Hux’s wrath, so astrogation could hardly be that vital.

She kept a secondary camera extruded behind her so she wouldn’t be caught unawares, and started sorting though the other chips. Battle droids (she had a wild moment of temptation there) kitchen droids, cleaning droids, mouse droids. And finally what she was looking for. Big, sleek neural chips, fat with new knowledge.

First she needed to dump some of her own stolen chips, because these new ones contained huge files. Niney scaled down her sensors so she could concentrate on her own diagnostics. She’d set up a subroutine to monitor the chips she snorted, but it took a lot of attention to keep it stable.

What could she jettison? Climate and meteorological modelling had been fun, but she could do without it. Terraforming was likewise an impulse she’d regretted. It took up a stupid amount of room in her processors. She flipped open her own cognitive access panel, selected the unwanted chips, and extracted them. It was an immediate relief to know less about the vast and ramified cycles that governed planets and the things that lived on them. Seen at that scale, everything planetary seemed crawly and impermanent.

There still wasn’t room in her brain matrix for the new chips. They were massive. But a quick scan of their indexes revealed that these chips contained data for thousands of species. Niney was only concentrating on humanoids. Even so, it was going to be tricky to separate out and interface it with what she had already. After long minutes of silence, during which her primary processors heated up with the intensity of her calculations, she gave her slicing ports a little anticipatory spin and a stretch. Reaching into her own neural matrix cavity was awkward, but once she was sure her slicing arm was as supple as it could get, she set to work.

A couple of hours later, her slicing was done, and she could identify the new sensation she was feeling as “queasiness”. Even a cursory glance at the malfunctions humans suffered, and the protocols for correcting them, made her feel “queasy”. Or, perhaps more specifically, she felt like a human who had been hit with a T-238 grenade. Niney could now list four courses of action for curing such an attack, but for her own situation, the only relief was to avoid accessing all new datafiles that ranged between “Abcess” and “Zit”. Not for the first time, she thanked her lucky stars she was not an organic life form.

There was a slight stir in the disassembly labs behind Niney. She ramped up her sensors and scanned behind her. People were getting up from their desks, stretching, and handing over datapads to the weary-looking new shift coming in. Niney looked around her immediate surroundings without moving. There was a clipboard nearby on the floor and next to it, a few flimsiplasts with lists scribbled on them, most items checked off. Quickly, she snatched them up, clipped them together and rolled out holding them, keeping up an air of busyness. Shift changes were good, because everyone always assumed she was working for the overlapping shift.

Then it was time to make the long haul over to the other side of the ship. She knew she was in the right sector when she encountered a mouse droid carrying stacked trays of lab samples. Niney fell in behind, trailing behind it as it made its rounds. She blended into a stack of spherical breathing gas canisters while the delivery droid received the orders Niney had been waiting for. A trip to the supply cabinets was indicated. Niney was right behind as the mouse droid buzzed the entry codes to the drug store. Once they’d both entered, the mouse droid seemed to notice her for the first time. It spun in circles, dithering. The drug store was off-limits to unauthorised life forms. But there were no instructions concerning droids.

“I hear it’s visiting hours,” said Niney, in binary.

“This isn’t a visiting place. This is a supply place,” twittered the mouse droid.

“I’m just powering down until it’s time to rejoin my pilot,” said Niney. “I’ll only get in the way out there. People and droids are doing important things. They are very busy. I can tell it’s best if I stay here.” And she parked herself meekly under a shelf.

The mouse droid tweeted a binary signal ceding to Niney’s superior powers of judgement. It collected up the materials it had come for, and bustled out the door.

Niney ran her sensors up and down the long aisles of shelving. They shone with their ranked collection of vials and boxes, bottles and bags. A library of arcane substances. Niney hummed happily, digging into the stores of knowledge in her new chip. It was as fascinating as it was repulsive.

Soon she knew exactly what she needed. She was pretty sure she knew a dumb droid that could take it to where it needed to go, too.


	17. Fixing a Lightsaber

Rey leaned on the low wall of the Deorendana Fastiyidata Gardens. It was a small patch of green for such a grand sounding name, but that suited Rey. Nobody much came here. It was a small square of carelessly-tended trees around a small stone fountain carved with funny little creatures. She didn’t know what they were. The galaxy was overwhelmingly full of things Rey had never heard of, and in recent weeks she’d decided she was content not to know what these trees were, or what the plump, laughing animals supporting the fountain were called. Sometimes, if she let herself sink into the Force around her, she knew them all anyway. On some level.

Chewie had sniffed out the park behind Premier House. It was a good place to take the two porgs he’d kept. Leia might have persuaded Chewie to leave them at the D’Acy estate with the others, but she was too busy to care. “He’s probably sick of talking to humans all day,” was her only comment. Rey could side with Chewie on that one.

“Han would turn in his grave,” said Poe afterwards, out of Leia’s hearing. “Those porgs have gutted the Falcon’s lounge chairs.”

“Well, we’re not on the Millennium Falcon now,” said Finn. “Premier House can afford to lose a few chairs to the porgs.”

Rey sighed and stretched out on the grass of the park. She had a decision to make. Tomorrow was a big day for the Resistance. Leia and the leaders of the Senate Restoration were holding a public rally in the main square, to be broadcast across the whole galaxy. There, they would announce the revival of the New Republic. They’d kept the old name (after a tiresome amount of arguing) to suggest continuity. It sent an important message that the First Order’s strike on the Hosnian System had merely set the New Republic back, not destroyed it. The rally would show that the systems hit by the First Order were done with licking their wounds. They had regrouped, elected new leaders, and now they were prepared to stand together against their common enemy.

Leia wanted Rey’s presence at the rally, possibly in a larger role. She kept saying that some announcement from Rey about her commitment to the Jedi way would give a message of hope. She wouldn’t pressure Rey, but….

But she would pressure Rey. Had been doing so, for weeks. Rey couldn’t avoid answering her forever.

Every time Rey thought about the rally, her chest tightened. She was losing sleep over it, waking out of nightmares. Danger. Danger.

There would be speeches, crowds. Cameras, holocams, imagers. Even if Rey did as she’d always done, and hovered at the back of the official party, she would be horribly exposed. Their official landing at the main spaceport had been bad enough. This would be a thousand times worse. Even thinking about it made her heart thump heavily in her chest. Imagers swarming like flies, sucking up every detail of Rey from every angle, for a whole galaxy of beings to dissect and discuss. She wasn’t just some nobody any more. But she wasn’t ready to be whatever the Holonet chatterers wanted either.

It wasn’t a fear Rey could talk about. Nobody in the Resistance really got it. “Nobody’s looking at you, Rey,” they’d say. “It’s Leia that should feel nervous”.

She should. That thought was like an echo to the drumbeat that woke Rey from sleep and dogged her steps. Leia was so exposed now the Resistance was no longer on the run. Even though since their election the Warlenttans had shown nothing but generosity to the Resistance, could they really protect Leia against her enemies? Rey’s nightmares recently kept insisting that they could not. In the dreams she could remember, Rey ran though some clagging mass that held her back, or swam in a dread, cold tide, never quite reaching Leia in time. Dream-Leia held her hand out, and her fingers slipped past Rey’s in a dark reverse of the time Rey had reached out to her son Ben.

Rey had told Finn about her dreams, of course. He was part of the Resistance’s tactical command as well as Rey’s friend, so she begged him to strengthen the security around them.

“We’re doing all we can, Rey,” he said, looking up from his screens. “But Leia believes this is no time to show fear, and I agree. We’re not the Resistance that hides any more.”

“It’s probably the crowds that are giving you nightmares,” said Rose, who’d been sitting quietly nearby, fiddling with a surveillance drone. “I hate them too. Don’t worry. You’ll get through it.” Kind Rose. She didn’t go in public as often as Rey, but when she did, Rey would catch her eye across the crowd and they’d exchange a look of wry sympathy.

Crowds. When they made that animal roar, when their faces blurred into a mass…Maybe Rose was right, and that was the real source of Rey’s fear. She swallowed the lump in her throat and tried to concentrate on the here and now. The sky, with that slight mauve tint it had on Warlentta. A couple of its smaller moons were up, making lavender crescents. Above Rey’s face, tree branches fanned out towards the light, making patterns that were soothing to look at. Their drooping, strap-like leaves kept up a soft rustle in the breeze. Rey rested her mind on them, on the gentle currents of Force that bound them. Eventually she felt her mouth loosen into a slight smile. On her first attempt to meditate Luke had flicked her with a switch very much like one of those leaves.

Strange how things that had annoyed her at the time seemed almost endearing. They were certainly funny when she told them to other people. Leia had laughed until tears came to her eyes and now, a few weeks later and a million light years away, Rey could see why.

Though on a different day, Leia might not have laughed at that story. She was as likely to get that dangerous glint in her eye, her mouth tightening over some spitfire opinion. “Typical Luke. You were doing your best to trust him, and he did that!”

Doing her best to trust. Leia had made that remark, in another context, and it stung. What was this trust that Rey was missing? Whatever bond held families together, perhaps Rey couldn’t sense it. She might always be blind to it, just as most people were blind to Kylo’s presence in the Force.

Only this morning over breakfast Leia had come over to Rey and put a warm hand on her shoulder while setting up a little holopad on the table in front of her. She’d keyed it on, and a series of small figures had flickered to life on the table. Rey leaned in to see what they were doing, but they weren’t doing anything except walking around against a neutral background. Models, she realised belatedly. “Look at these tops; would you like one of these?” Leia had asked. “I thought this would suit you, and I know you love green…it would go with this tunic here. Simple and elegant, but easy to move in too.”

“Thank you, I love them,” said Rey, who didn’t have any opinion on them at all. Leia kept giving her clothes. It usually took weeks of catching sight herself unexpectedly in mirrors before she knew how she felt about them. But as a gesture it was beautiful. Leia had given her new clothes and Rey had gone to Ahch-To wearing the Resistance’s care and faith wrapped around her like a second skin.

A moment later Poe had walked into the dining room, frowning. “Low Chancellor Vos blasted off this morning before we could pin him down to another meeting.”

Leia had turned to Rey immediately, all business. “Did you get those production statistics from him yesterday?”

“No. I mean, I tried, but…”

Leia cut her off. “We need to back up our case for protecting the outer systems in his sector. Otherwise there’s that faction that wants to go haring off to waste our resources on targets at the other end of the Outer Rim.”

“I know,” said Rey, floundering. “I saw him before the dinner at the Raxian Embassy, but he was surrounded by those Gossams that want…” she had to rack her brain to remember what the Gossams wanted, “… the Shumavar blockade continued. He looked busy…”

“I thought I told you he might leave without warning, Rey. Honestly, what is the use of having the Force if you won’t use it?”

Leia had had no training in the Force; therefore she used it to do the one very specific thing she needed it for: to persuade people. Having delivered her rebuke, she snapped the holoimager shut. “I’ll get you the dark green shirt, then,” she finished, as though agreeing with an opinion Rey hadn’t expressed.

Rey didn’t want to think about Leia right now. She focused on the trees above her again. Did they have fruit? Luke had had a little orchard on Ahch-To. He had some kind of wordless affection for the trees. They’d drop their hard spiky fruit on him and he’d swear at them companionably. He’d scoop one up and crack it open to eat it, throw another one at Rey so quickly that she couldn’t decide between using the Force or using her hand to catch it, and in the end did neither. “Some gifts are hard,” Luke had said, which might mean something profound, or nothing at all. He’d laughed at her expression then.

 _Did you ever see the funny side of him?_ she asked the silence behind her eyes. Silent by choice; far away, Kylo definitely sensed her question, but the wash of feelings from him were too difficult to interpret. Kylo had only recently learned, or at any rate accepted, that Luke was dead. It was forcing him to reinterpret everything he thought he knew. Rey held her connection with him as steady as she could, probing at its complexities. It was both pleasurable and painful, like poking at a loose baby tooth with her tongue, or stretching a muscle that was sore yet demanded movement.

One of the First Order officers at the D’Acy’s estate had been what Leia called a “wine bore”. Taking a shine to Rey, he’d tried to teach her about his hobby. At first the drink had seemed nothing but sour, but as she learned to hold it in her mouth, to breathe its backwash, to swirl it over her tongue, she began to taste the complex layers of flavour the man spoke of with such enthusiasm. Kylo’s presence in the Force reminded her of that. Most people’s essence, seen through the Force, was simpler, as though they could be summed up in a few colours and flavours. Kylo’s was not. Everything in him that seemed purely bitter on the surface was shot through with such a confusion of opposites: anger and despair, passion and calculation, decision and doubt. And deep down, even a capacity for joy. All the Skywalkers were like that, but Kylo most of all. Like the D’Acy’s wine lover, Rey was beginning to find simple things bland by comparison.

_Have you fixed that lightsaber yet?_

Kylo’s presence was suddenly much closer. Rey sat up hurriedly, and for a moment Kylo seemed to be seated opposite her. She eyed him warily, but he’d lost that air of desperate pride he had sometimes that meant he was likely to lash out. Nor did he seem as exhausted as the time when he’d put his arms around her. He seemed, well, calm, if calm was ever a word one could apply to Kylo. Definitely Ben, then, not Kylo.

_You know I haven’t fixed it._

_I want to see how you’re doing it._ If he was still coveting it, there was no sign. Nothing on his face besides the professional interest of a person whose business is lightsabers.

 _You’ve been spying on me anyway when I try. Don’t think I can’t tell_. Even as she said it, Rey’s retort sounded petty. Something a child would say, or a silly girl, trying to flirt by acting contrary. Rey’s ears burned.

It was a relief, then, that Ben did not reply. Instead, there was an expression on his face that she’d never seen in real life: that long, crooked mouth stretching into a smile. For once, there were no hard edges to him, and the smile accentuated the tilt of his eyes. They were so unusual. Rey leaned closer to get a better look.

 _I’ll try again tonight, she said. But_ — She stopped, appalled. Even if this was just a Force projection of him, she’d as much as invited him to her room. _Tonight. I have to go_ , she said, and got up.

 _I’ll see if I can remember anything that might help_ , he said seriously. And then he was gone, leaving only an impression of lightness. And no question that it was infectious; as Rey walked back to the Resistance headquarters, she was almost skipping. When had she let her shoulders become so rounded? When had this weight attached itself to her? Now it was gone, and for lack of it she could hardly keep her feet on the ground.

The first person she ran into back at Premier House was Poe. He was the perfect example of a person whose presence in the Force was simplicity itself. Sunny, brave, optimistic and quick-tempered, the Force showed him to Rey in bright colours like a child’s painting.

“Have you made up your mind yet?” he asked. “Want to stand on the stage and make history with us?” He gave her his usual cocky grin. He accepted fame as his due; blossomed in it, let it wash over him.

It was infectious. Rey smiled at him. “Probably,” she said. Poe smiled back as if it were a certainty.

Dinner was a serious affair, and quiet. Many of the Resistance were working late elsewhere, making last minute arrangements for the big rally tomorrow. Leia was among those who ate in the big dining room, but her attention was on a pair of datapads and a holoscreen ranged around her plate. Rey finished her meal and went to her room as soon as she could.

She kept the pieces of lightsaber in the satchel where she kept all her essentials. Now she took them out and laid them on the little desk she’d been given. Even before she began, she felt the difference in the Force. She relaxed her senses into it. Anticipation. Ben’s, certainly - the slightest tug on the bond between them would catch his attention - but the Force itself had an expectant quality. If she focused on the lightsaber pieces, they spoke of impatience too. We were whole once. We were greater than the parts of us. The crystal, though, was different. If it had a song, it was a sad and broken one.

The kyber crystal kept scratching at her awareness while she fitted together the other pieces, tracing where the wiring and the screws must go. She had a pouch of small fasteners and wires she’d collected, and some of her old tools from Jakku. She used to wear these tiny blades and snips and screwdrivers and spanners looped into her old belt. They were low-tech, some of them hand-forged. Perhaps the lightsaber had been made in a modern engineering lab with microlasers and high frequency vibraspanners and molecular imagers. But the more Rey studied it, the more certain she was that it had been assembled out of whatever parts its creator had to hand. Rey had done that kind of thing as long as she remembered, and with these same tools too. Primitive as they were, they had an affinity with her work.

At first she’d just fiddled with the lightsaber during odd moments in her room at the D’Acy estate, but task was becoming more urgent. The Resistance needed a symbol; Leia in her new public role needed Rey to appear as a reminder of the Jedi. Somebody who could stand at her shoulder with a lightsaber.

The old Jedi texts had diagrams of how lightsabers should be assembled. After spending hours in meditation with the parts floating around her like the beatific-looking padawans in the illustrations, Rey decided she’d prefer to assemble the lightsaber physically. In her trances, the circuit and assembly diagrams revealed their secrets to her, and that was enough. Rose and Connix had helped her find replacement parts, and she had put the weapon together several times already. She’d tested the circuits. She’d inserted the fractured kyber crystal, screwed down its housing. But nothing had happened when she switched it on.

Now she tried again, but this time she kept her attention on the Force around her. Maybe the scratchy, broken song of the kyber crystal was more than just her imagination. She took it out of its housing and held it cupped in her hand. Pale blue, a beautiful colour, like a world seen from space. One of the good ones, full of oxygen and water and life. But this was a broken crystal, starred and marred. Its sharp edges seemed to snag the Force around it, making a tightness that felt wrong. If she hadn’t been so greedy, so desperate to have it at any cost, it wouldn’t be broken. _I’m sorry_ , she told it, stroking the hard shattered edges as if a human hand could smooth them out. The tension from the crystal seemed to diminish. Or maybe her gesture just assuaged her own guilt.

A ghostly finger appeared over her own. Rey’s breath caught for a moment. That was Kylo’s hand, running its fingers softly over the crystal, ghosting above the palm of her hand. Or rather, Ben’s hand. The maker, not the killer.

 _I’ve never touched a whole one either_ , he told her. His voice a breathy whisper in her ear.

 _Didn’t you make your lightsaber yourself?_ she asked. If she turned her head towards his voice, she’d be looking straight into his eyes, inches away. Was she imagining the warmth against her cheek?

_Yes. But the crystal in mine was broken already when I found it._

Rey risked a sideways glance and saw nothing. Was he afraid her direct gaze might catch him out? It had made him uncomfortable enough to shift, anyway. A second later his image reappeared and took on solidity, this time sitting a few feet away on the bed. He seemed thinner, the skin under his eyes hollow and bruise-dark. Yet his gaze was clear; there was none of that weirdness she’d seen so often that made him look drunk, or drugged. There were so many questions she wanted to ask about that, but she needed to deal with the lightsaber first.

“So this kyber crystal could work too?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Then why does nothing happen when I put it together?” She pointed at the Jedi book lying open on the bed. “What am I missing?”

Ben gave a startled look at the ancient book. “You found that?” Then he chuckled softly, shaking his head. “Of course you did. You really are Snoke’s worst nightmare.” For a moment, there was a sharp-toothed gleam of cruelty in his amusement.

 _And why not?_ thought Rey. He had years of payback owing.

Ben became serious again. “With lightsabers, there was always a part of the process that was passed on verbally,” he said. “You’re meditating, you’re drawing on the Force, but you’re missing a connection with the kyber crystal.”

“I feel something from it when I try to work on the lightsaber, but I don’t want to. It hurts.”

“Because it’s broken.” Ben’s look was brooding, but there didn’t seem to be any judgement there. He could have let go of the lightsaber too, rather than let it be pulled in half.

There was a long silence; Ben with his elbows on his knees, chin resting on his hands. Rey holding the kyber crystal up to see the light coming through at different angles. But really, waiting for him to speak again. Eventually, he did.

“It took me a long time to figure it out,” he said. Behind his words she caught a glimpse: over a year. A year of doubting himself, of getting no help from Snoke, of shame and fear of failure. His head jerked up and she caught the flash of his eyes. Enough. He wasn’t ready to let her see so much.

“Sorry,” she said meekly.

“We’re taught to think of the Force as a whole. To seek wholeness in it.”

“But the light and the dark are so divided,” said Rey.

“Yes, but the tension between them also binds them, and all of us with it,” said Ben. “That’s what people don’t see.”

“But I thought the dark didn’t want to be bound by anything. It’s what the dark is, isn’t it? Something that denies all rules?”

Ben laughed, and it was the saddest laugh Rey had ever heard. “It’s what we’re told,” he said. “That we could seize all that power. That we would be free, totally free.” His voice sank, deeper and darker, taking on a hypnotic cadence. “Kick down the walls and stride out into a boundless horizon. The galaxy and all its stars, a treasure chest for the taking.”

“No,” said Rey, her voice a pebble dropping into a quiet well.

“No,” echoed Ben. “The dark is just dark, and if you try to embrace it, you will go mad trying to stamp out every light, no matter how tiny. Even one candle.”

“And its opposite…” began Rey, holding up the kyber crystal so it blazed with light and spangled the walls. “Those Jedi texts,” she began again, then broke off, trying to assemble her thoughts. Ben’s candour deserved more than a recital of commonplace Jedi sayings... “I find myself arguing with them. Because the light….when I meditate…” Certain ideas were falling into place clearly now she had a person to argue with, instead of just dusty old pages. “I seek the light, the way the books say. And it’s beautiful, and very calm. It feels good.”

“I remember,” said Ben. “And then…?” His eyes held hers, burning with the intensity of his enquiry.

“Then nothing. Nothing happens.”

“And nothing ever _would!_ The light…”

“The light wants to hold everything in perfect peace forever,” finished Rey, nodding. “In perfect light, nothing would change and nobody would do anything.” Suddenly she sat up, mouth open with surprise as the rest of her thought became clear.. “And that’s why it’s called the Force! It wouldn’t be a Force if it was at rest! It has to do something!”

“Yes!” said Ben, smacking his hand down on his knee. “It’s there between the light and the dark, pulling them together when they want to fly apart.”

“One wants to _act,_ the other wants to _be,_ ” said Rey, testing the thought on her tongue. “It’s the tension between them.” Not just the tension between things, as Luke had taught her, but between ideas too. She looked at Kylo, who had an entirely new expression on his face. Proud, relieved, happy. Actually happy. It gave Rey a little frisson of delight in return, as though they’d cracked a puzzle together. “You’ve thought about this a lot,” she said.

“I’ve had people asking me things,” he said, haltingly. “Making me think.” The long lines of his face pulled down out of their unguarded smile. Already he was retreating into his private world.

Rey wondered again who he was talking to. “People asking me things” indeed! Whoever they were had to take some credit for breaking down some of his defences. It was a peculiar mixture of pain and pleasure to know somebody was. I thought I would be the one to fix him.

She brought the topic back to the lightsaber before Ben could drift away. “So the light and dark, the balance, the tension, they make a whole. But this kyber crystal isn’t whole. I feel that it isn’t.” Rey screwed up her eyes and felt the air with her fingers, trying to describe it. “It makes this ugly broken place in the Force, like a snag. Where it’s broken, it scratches.”

Ben’s look was understanding. “But some things are broken. You have to accept that is their nature. You have to stop wishing they were other than what they are.”

“Let the past die,” quoted Rey. The look Ben gave her in return was filled with sadness.

“That’s not how I meant it, but yes,” he muttered. “Stop holding on to what isn’t and can’t be.”

Rey held the crystal up again. “I love you, little crystal, just as you are,” she said, smiling. “Even though you are broken.” Anything to pull Ben out of his sudden gloom.

The result was anything but funny. The Force around them bucked so hard that the walls of the room seem to swell outwards then clap back in silent shock. Yet nothing moved at all. It was a convulsion in the Force only.

“What was that?” whispered Rey. She was afraid to look over at Ben. When she finally did, he was gone.

Slowly Rey put the crystal into its housing in the lightsaber. She let it rest there while she sank into a deep trance. This time she reached towards the place where the broken crystal made the Force tangle and splinter. But it was all right. The crystal made beautiful patterns in the light through its flaws. “There, there,” she murmured, and followed the kyber crystal’s twisted signature in the Force, not to smooth it out, but to explore it. She opened her senses towards it. The broken crystal was layered with bitter and sweet, rich and complex as old wine. Like the Skywalkers.

Her hands moved instinctively to close the crystal’s housing, her tools an extension of her will and of the Force. Within the lightsaber, where she couldn’t touch them, pieces moved themselves into a different alignment.

Rey opened her eyes. The lightsaber lay completed in her hands. She thumbed the switch, and the blade shot out, filling the room with light.

Rey sprang out of her seat, her body flowing lightly into the training forms she’d made her own. It was effortless, the lightsaber an extension of her arm.

It was not the same as it had been; the blade sizzled with more fire than light, and the powerful hum of its energy was overlaid with a new crackling sound. She might have to add quillions to stabilise it, as Kylo had done. But that was all right; she could see a way to do it. And if it didn’t work, he would show her how.


	18. The Rally

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags have changed since I began this story
> 
> \- - - -

The dining room at Premier House was crowded for breakfast. It was the morning of the big rally and the Resistance’s Crait survivors were not alone; dozens of their Warlenttan allies were dining with them. As Rey descended the stairs, she could hear many voices echoing off the smooth synthstone ceiling. The room was done in an outdated style; the smooth, asymmetrical arches that vaulted the ceiling and the pinkish ripple-patterned floor gave it a vaguely organic look. Today the screens on the windows were drawn back all the way. The morning sun streaming through the oval windows made it a cheerful space, together with the clatter of cutlery and the animated talk at every table.

“Rey, come over here.” Finn was waving her over to the farthest table where he sat with Rose, Poe, D’Acy, Nien Nunb and Leia. Rey smiled and made her way over, pausing a moment to look out the windows.

The front of Premier House faced Warlentta’s central government buildings, a cluster of tall grey blocky structures that receded into the distance down the broad avenues of central Delessa. The main Senate chambers were directly across from Premier House across a wide plaza; the State Library and a couple of museums and galleries formed the other sides of the square. They were older buildings, mostly in the same colourful organic-looking style as Premier House. The rally would take place in the plaza below.

There was a temporary stage erected in front of the Warlentta Central Archive building, which commanded the best sightlines over the plaza. Workers were portioning off parts of the plaza and setting out chairs for the VIPs. Spindly towers held the tethers for the floating soundcasters that would relay Leia’s words to the crowd; through the windows Rey could hear bursts of sound as somebody tested the sound system. A pair of large imager screens flanked the stage. Rey watched as a pair of workers unfurled a banner from the scaffolding at the back. People in the plaza stopped to cheer at the sight of the Resistance symbol, several storeys high, rippling in the breeze.

Leia left her place at the table and came to stand beside Rey. “That does look fine,” Leia said. “Sometimes I never thought I’d live to see the day.” Her voice was husky with emotion. So many had died to make this day possible.” She laid an arm around Rey’s shoulder. “Now, where will you be?”

“I haven’t decided,” said Rey, swallowing. She turned away and went to sit down between Poe and Finn, who were tucking into their usual meaty breakfasts. Moments later a Premier House servant was at her shoulder, pouring her kaf and juice and offering her dymma buns from a basket tucked under her arm. “I heard these were your favourite,” said the woman. Rey glanced up at her. It was a new servant, an older woman with dark hair drawn back severely from a tired-looking face. “Please enjoy,” she said, smiling earnestly and putting a bun on her plate. Rey smiled back stiffly. She recognised the kind of awkward hero worship she got sometimes from people who’d heard rumours about "Rey, the Jedi". It was never comfortable to be around.

Rey bit into her dymma bun. It was delicious, as always. Powdery sweetness falling off a crisp crust, and inside, a cloud-soft sponge.

“I’ll have another one too, please,” she said, reaching for more.

“Yes, I’ll just go warm them up for you,” said the servant, whisking the buns out of reach.

“No, they’re fine as they are,” said Rey. She’d found the crust got tough if it was reheated.

“Oh, they’re better warm,” said the servant, and turned to go.

Poe leaned back and lifted the basked from her as she passed his seat. “The lady knows what she wants,” he said, and handed it to Rey, who took three buns. Then another one for good measure.

“Ahh, too many of those at once can be…ah, not a good idea,” said the servant, glancing rapidly between Poe and Rey. “You don’t want to be sick for the rally.”

“I’ve seen her eat eight at once,” said Finn.

“Cast iron stomach,” said Rey, snatching up a bun. “If it’s not actually decomposing, I’ll eat it, thanks.”

There was a moment of shock on the servant’s face, then she walked off with a stiff back. A disappointed fan. Rey sighed, and stuffed another roll in her mouth. She couldn’t live up to whatever inflated ideal people had of her. They probably imagined she spent all day standing on one leg and meditating. That she lived on moonflower dew, and that only sweet pearls of wisdom fell from her lips.

“So, what are you doing at the rally?” asked Finn. “Has Leia told you?”

“I’m not sure. I thought I’d just be in the crowd. Hear what people say about us, you know?”

“You think that’s safe?”

“The Force, Finn. People won’t notice me, and if there’s danger, I’ll feel it coming.” She’d talked with Finn about her life on Jakku enough to realise that no normal person could have had as many lucky escapes as she had. The Force had kept her out of harm’s way long before she knew what it was. “Anyway, I’ll see how I feel. I think I have a headache coming on.”

“Too many dymma buns?” asked Poe.

“No, not enough sleep,” said Rey. Leia, who’d been making the rounds of the tables, caught her eye just then and Rey had to conceal a guilty start. If Leia knew she had fixed the lightsaber, that she’d spent half the night dancing around her room with it, there was no way she’d let Rey off making an appearance at the rally.

But Leia just arched an eyebrow in silent appeal. There was never any telling which side of the line Rey stood; on one side, anyone was fair game to be harried and bent to Leia’s will. On the other side, Leia showed enormous patience towards them, swallowing her disappointment and relying on hope. _Well, look how long she’d had to wait for Luke to do the right thing._ She could wait a bit longer for Rey to decide where she stood.

“I’ll let you know,” she said, before Leia could ask. “I’ll join you later. I’m feeling a bit off-colour.” She drained her cup of kaf and stood up. “Good luck,” she said, and joined the general stir of people leaving the room.

Going upstairs, she felt as though she was floating through the house. Everyone else she met was bustling along, heads in their datapads or talking urgently to their hand-held imagers. By the time she got to her room, she was sure she wasn’t going to the rally. Her thoughts had become a strange woolly stuffing too big for her head, and rising nausea clawed at her throat. She barely had time to stagger into the refresher before she brought up all her breakfast. She clung to the rim of the bowl as a tide of blackness swept over her. She swam against it for a moment, then let go.

Some time must have passed before she came to. The sun was high enough to make short bright bars of light on the floor of the bedroom. Rey shivered. She had a foggy desire for that warmth, but getting to her feet was too much effort. She used the pedestal of the basin to pull herself up enough so she could drink from the faucet, washing out the vile metallic taste in her mouth. Then she crawled into the bedroom and lay in a patch of sunlight.

Outside, the murmuring of a crowd grew as time passed. Something scuttled up to her and beeped urgently for a while before going away. Rey didn’t have the energy to look at it. The beeping turned into an urgent clanging inside her own head. A warning bell. But she still couldn’t move.

The next thing she knew, an olive-skinned Mirialan in a medico’s uniform was turning her over. The sun struck her face and she squinted up at him, trying to form a question. All she could do was swallow convulsively, her throat dry as though scoured with metallic salts.

“A cleaning droid found you on the floor,” he said, in answer to her unasked question. “What happened?”

“I just feel really really sick. I think I ate something…I threw up, then I passed out.”

The medico gestured to a medical droid hovering behind him. The droid took Rey’s temperature and blood pressure and drew samples of her blood and saliva. The medico helped her onto her bed and questioned her about her illness. Rey couldn’t say much, except that it had come on very suddenly after breakfast.

The droid beeped and extruded a strip of flimsiplast. The medico took it and read over the results, brows rising as he went down the list. “It appears you’ve been poisoned,” he said. “Something rare. I’ve only heard of this as an experimental drug. It’s something the First Order was working on.”

Rey remembered the new servant offering her the dymma buns. Something only Rey liked to eat. How badly Rey had misread her! Not a nervous fan, but a nervous assassin! It took several tries before Rey could make her voice work. “Was it meant to kill me?” she asked.

The medico tilted his head and hesitated. “You…are Force sensitive, I hear?”

“Yes,” said Rey, and the clanging bell at the back of her head started up again. _Warning! Warning! Warning!_

“In normal doses, this drug would incapacitate you. It would be impossible to concentrate long enough to harness any Force powers you might have, and you’d be too distracted to notice.” He glanced outside, where the roar of the crowd rose steadily to beat against the windows. The rally must be close to starting, if it hadn’t already begun. “I think the intention was to render you powerless. But in such a subtle way that you might have gone out there not realising anything was wrong that couldn’t be put down to lack of sleep or over-excitement.”

Rey put her hand on her satchel, feeling for the solid reassurance of lightsaber. Its potential was a dull stirring of power through the Force that touched her for an instant before slipping out of reach. She had to find a way to keep hold! “Is there an antidote?” she asked.

“No,” said the doctor. “Or at least not that’s known outside the First Order. But you might be lucky. You got such an overdose of the drug that your stomach couldn’t handle it and you vomited it up almost immediately.”

“No wonder the servant tried to stop me eating too many of those buns!”

“It may be only the adjuvant for the drug that’s making you feel so weak now. I can give you something for that.” The medico tapped a script into the droid and it floated out the door. “It should be back in ten minutes. There’s a dispensary a couple of blocks over.”

Rey nodded. “I think I have to get out there.” She waved towards the window.

“Can you, uh, use the Force?” asked the medico.

For answer, Rey held her hand over the medico’s stylus and made it hover above his datapad. It wobbled in the air for a moment before she allowed it to drop back. “Getting there,” she said. Then had put her hand over her mouth as her stomach gave a sudden heave.

She spent the next ten minutes sitting with her head in her hands. The medico tried to contact the Resistance to tell them there’d been an attempt to put Rey out of action. His call was sent up the chain of command until it reached Finn. The medico explained what was happening, and gave Rey the handset.

“Stars, Rey, I’m glad you’re not hurt worse. Stay down and keep out of the way. We’re about to start here. I’ll get a couple of security droids sent up to your room.”

“No, I’ll be fine. Whoever did it _wanted_ me out of the way. I haven’t lost the Force. I’ll be down as soon as the healer’s given me something for the nausea.”

“Rey…”

“If they wanted me out of the way, then I have to be there. Warn Leia we have enemies.”

“I will,” said Finn, and looked around over his shoulder. The crowd noise rose into a roar. “I have to go. Take care.” There was concern in Finn’s voice, but he’d been a soldier longer than Rey. He’d stick to his post and expect her to do the same.

“See you soon,” said Rey.

The droid returned. The medico double-checked the medshot capsule it held, even uncapping and sniffing it, before giving Rey a jab in the arm. “Can’t be too careful,” he said. He reached for a sachet on the droid’s carrier tray, took it to the jug of water by the bed and mixed up a pale green drink. “This is a stimulant. Drink up.”

The warning bells were really going off in Rey’s head now. _Danger! Danger!_ But where? The Force was infuriatingly non-specific. “You first,” she said, staring at the glass in the medico’s hand.

He paused, taken aback, then gave a rueful laugh. “I can’t say I blame you.” He took a large gulp and smiled at her over the rim of the glass. “Now I’ll be bouncing off walls all day.” His grin grew wider and wider, then he jumped to his feet. “Whew! Jumping rathtars, I can see why we don’t hand this stuff out to just anybody!”

Rey took the glass and downed the rest of it. Immediately the cold quivering lump in her stomach was replaced by warmth that spread out through her limbs, driving out the weakness.

“Wow,” she said, returning the medico’s grin. She stood a moment, letting the strength and balance come back into her limbs. And the Force -- it hummed around her, still filled with that message of alarm. Rey closed her eyes and centred herself in her breathing. The Force was there, yet maddeningly out of her grasp.

Outside, the crowd roared and fell silent. The words of the rally’s first speaker filled the square, echoing between the hovering audio towers.

“I have to go. Thanks,” said Rey. She felt in her satchel and clipped the lightsaber to her belt. Its hilt carried a thrill of urgency, and Rey snatched her hand away. This was the lightsaber’s bloodlust, not hers.

She pulled open the window and the clangour of amplified speech filled the room along with the susurration of the crowd. It was as bad as she’d imagined: Thousands. Maybe tens of thousands. Far off to the right over a sea of heads, Leia was a pale dot standing before the gigantic Resistance banner. President Echa Modan was standing next to her, and some famous holocast personality was speaking in front of the imagers, warming up the crowd. Rey’s stomach filled with a dread that was distinct from the sickness she’d just had, but just as terrible in its way. She wanted to slam the window shut and slink under the bedcovers.

Leia, just a tiny white flower in front of banner. The hope of the Resistance. Symbol to the galaxy’s poorest and most oppressed. The conviction of danger rose in Rey, stronger than ever.

 _Rey, what is happening?_ Ben was with her, invisible yet so intensely present that she could feel his heart beating in tandem with hers, as though the whole room was running wild with one big disordered pulse. Her fear was bleeding over into him, and she couldn’t stop it.

“It’s your mother. She’s about to give a big speech.”

“On the holonet, right? I know, it’s all the kids are talking about.”

_What kids?_

The medico paused from packing up his gear and gave Rey a curious look. Of course he couldn’t see or hear Ben. But the Force, the Force was with her! And because of that, Ben was with her too. Or maybe it was the reverse: it was Ben’s bond with her that was connecting her with the Force.

“There’s this huge crowd. Something’s wrong though!” Rey said.

“I know, I feel it too,” said Ben. “They're broadcasting it here. I’m going to go watch.” Rey had the impression that he was on the move somewhere. Running, even.

“Listen, somebody tried to drug me. They didn’t succeed. But it held me up. I’m going out there now.”

“Don’t put yourself in harm’s way for her!” he said, anguish in his voice overriding the rasp of his breath as he ran.

“You don’t get to choose who I risk myself for,” she said, and for a moment both of them were lost in that electric moment when she’d opened the escape pod in Snoke’s ship, and Kylo had stared down at her, and the look between them had promised everything and nothing.

A tumult of applause from the crowd snapped Rey into the present. There was danger here and now. Possibly right outside her room, or waiting at the entrance to Premier House, where people were packed in a swaying mass on the steps, below and to the left of Rey’s window. Or somewhere near the stage where Leia stood waiting for President Echan Moda to finish speaking on behalf of Warlentta.

Prompted by a sudden urge, Rey vaulted over the low curve of the windowsill. “Shortcut,” she explained briefly to the startled medico. Then she was dropping onto a ledge that jutted out over the window below like an eyelid. She crouched, swivelled herself, allowed herself to hang by her hands, then swung herself over to land on a portico below. She’d always done this, scavenging wrecks on Jakku. She’d brushed off people’s exclamations that her leaps were impossible. They just needed to practice more, she’d said, not knowing how it felt to leap into thin air without the Force. Though for a moment in mid-air, she wondered if she was about to find out, because if it was only Ben’s connection with the Force that supported her, how reliable was that?

 _Reliable enough._ The Force came to her through Ben, a warm hand holding her up as easily as an adult swings a child in the air.

She dangled from the portico for a moment until the crowd below moved aside and she could see a spot to land. She did so, drawing a thankful breath that the Force was indeed with her still. A few people turned, wondering where she’d suddenly appeared from. But then she was out of sight, sliding between the packed bodies towards the faraway stage. _Warning, warning!_ went the voice in the back of her head, and it was not only her heart that was beating so wildly as she pushed and slithered her way through the crowd.

Another crescendo from the crowd. Leia was stepping up to the the semicircle of hovering imagers that would transmit her speech to the whole galaxy. The noise was terrible, but Rey found herself mercifully invisible in the uproar. Every eye was focused on the stage. _Ah, but some of those eyes are hostile, surely._ She must reach out with the Force and find that thread of evil that was lying in wait, hidden in the multitude.

“It’s there, I feel it too,” said Ben. He was beside her, an invisible presence pulling the Force around them both like a cape. “Off to the left of the stage, I think…”

Yes, something was there. An intention to harm.

Casting her senses out, everything the Force could give her, she pushed and shoved now. The people were thickening around her like a glue that held her back the closer she approached the stage. It was overwhelming. So much life, so much thought and intention, the Force binding everyone around her not like a tapestry but like a thick carpet, and Rey was a tiny bug getting lost among the strands.

“Rey, I can’t keep this up. There are too many people…” Ben gasped in her ear. Then he was gone, and with his absence, Rey’s link to the Force drained away. Dwindled to a little thread. She was an ordinary person surrounded by a crowd, and somebody was going to…

She was nearly at the base of the stage, praying the Force would help her jump up beside Leia, when a something blotted out the sun. She looked up, and the improbable weight of a Star Destroyer was suddenly hovering there, its dark triangular belly visible in every detail. Arriving out of lightspeed far too close, but since when had the First Order cared about the traffic laws? An instant later a shock wave struck the crowd. Rey staggered and fought the buffeting air, trying to turn again towards the stage, the warning bell in her mind screaming _Danger! Danger!_

Nobody could have heard the shot in the roar of the panicking masses. There was only a line of light streaking out from somewhere in the crowd, and Leia crumpling to her knees, hand flung up to cover the smoking hole in her chest, then dropping limply at her side as she fell.

Rey pulled on the Force around her with an animal cry and made the impossible leap from the ground to the stage. Everyone there was frozen in a tableau of horror around Leia’s body.

_Danger, danger!_

Rey heard the sound of a hoverskim too late as it surged round the edge of the stage and over the heads of the crowd. She was still turning towards it, straight into the muzzle of a stunner, when everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- - -
> 
> The next chapter will take a couple of weeks as I'm spending time with family and there'll be a backlog of work to catch up with after that.


	19. Nadir

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo won't be licking his wounds alone in the dark forever
> 
>  
> 
> \- - -

Even from Kylo’s hiding place in the rafters above Dancing Boy, the rising tension in Canto Bight was obvious. It was a week before the big Resistance rally on Warlentta, and holocasters had sprouted everywhere in the streets. The reactions of the passing crowds reached even into the stableyard. The head groom, Bargwill Tember, walked with an extra swagger, smiling and curling his mouth-tentacles obsequiously to the wealthy fathier owners who came to visit their beasts. “It’ll all blow over like a summer storm. Maybe General Organa and the Resistance make a prettier picture for the holonews, but General Hux has the ships,” he’d say. “Next year’s races will be a real scene, you wait. All the First Order officers and their companions, here to gamble and watch your fathier win the Cup.” He’d smile to his employers, then spit expressively as the gate shut behind them. “Bloodsuckers. They want order in the galaxy but they won’t lift a finger to make it happen.”

Kylo had seen more of the First Order’s supporters since coming to Canto Bight than he’d ever done as Snoke’s apprentice. As he lurked in the darkness of the stables, a silent listening presence, he had the luxury of finding them all equally despicable. They billed themselves as the dynamos driving the affairs of the galaxy, but all Kylo had seen was comfortable greed and the kind of impenetrable indifference only great wealth could buy.

The ugly black wedges of the First Order ships still hung over the city, a heavy lid tamping down the tensions below.

“The rally will have thousands of people,” said Sar, her voice dreamy. “I wonder if Leia will wear that blue dress.” She was sprawled with the other stablehands on the straw of Dancing Boy’s stall. Their day’s work was over and they were talking, as they did every night, of the doings of the Resistance. Blagg practiced Kylo’s exercises while the others, who were not Force sensitive, watched.

“Of course she will. She’ll hold her hand up like _this,_ with that big ring flashing in the sun, and _everyone_ in the crowd will shout,” said Blagg, leaving his practice to pick up the threads of a possible story. “A shout so loud the First Order will hear it from the darkest, coldest planets in the Unknown Regions.”

“They’ll hear it, and they’ll shake in their boots,” said Zaya passionately. He took his stormtrooper doll and made it tremble and fall backwards.

Kylo, perched above them like a sick bird, felt his stomach drop. Leia, a tiny dot in a sea of people. The image took him straight back to that moment on the _Silencer_ when his thumb had hovered over the ignition button of his laser cannons. She’d been so vulnerable, on the bridge of the cruiser beneath the First Order’s attack. But he said nothing. A wave of nausea made him sway and grip the wooden beam. He’d had no alcohol and no glitterstim for a week. With the First Order combing the streets, he couldn’t go out.

The children had a thousand ways to edge him into their conversations. Temiri Blagg meditated and made the shovel and pitchfork dance around each other, grave and clumsy, before cocking an eye up to see Kylo’s reaction. Sar speculated loudly on politics.

“Hux says the Core Worlds who’ve accepted First Order rule are more prosperous than ever,” she’d say to Blagg. “Do you think he’s lying?” she’d ask, flinging the question high enough to bait Kylo into the conversation. Of course he’d answer. He had first-hand experience of Hux. The children’s eyes made ‘O’s of wonder when he talked about him. Sar made a red-headed straw doll and Blagg made the Kylo doll beat the stuffing out of it.

“What do you think Hux would say to _that?”_ Sar asked the air above their heads. Kylo squeezed a grin past his pounding headache.

When the First Order came to search the stables Kylo lay flat as a plank in his hiding place, fantasising about how he might drop down on a squad of startled stormtroopers and smash them around until they leaked out between the joints of their armour. But then he’d have to leave Canto Bight. Steal a ship, and there were no ships to steal; only fat transport shuttles stuffed with more stormtroopers who had plenty of fantasies of their own concerning the reward they’d get for catching Kylo Ren. He could only watch, gritting his teeth, as they searched the drains under the stables and dug around in a mountain of straw helpfully pointed out by Sar.

Kylo shivered, trying not to scratch the maddening itch that crawled all over his skin. This was no time to lose his grip and fall off the rafters, straight into a blaster bolt.

Gambling was out of the question. The latest “Have You Seen This Man?” posters could, at a stretch, be linked to him. Kylo had no memory of posing bare-faced in his new black tunic in front of the freshly-formed Knights of Ren, but evidently he once had. By now the gang that met under the boardwalk had seen him often enough to put two and two together. The reward for ratting out on Kylo Ren would look to them like a sure bet.

“Who are the Knights of Ren?” asked Blagg, sweeping under Kylo’s hiding place.

“Bad people,” said Kylo shortly. So bad he hadn’t thought of them in months. Snoke had sent them off on some quest that would, he said, weed out the weaklings. Kylo didn’t miss them. His hopes of finding a kindred spirit among the Knights of Ren were long dead.

Sneaking out late one night, Kylo saw the posters and wondered at the idiot he’d been once, to stand with his chest puffed out and his face alight with idealism. Or fanaticism. Somebody at the time had touched up the image to give him bigger eyes, a straighter nose and a more heroic jaw, so it wasn’t much of a likeness. Kylo laughed a hissing laugh under his breath and went about his evening’s work, using the Force to spread the idea that the tall fellow with the big nose and floppy hair had shipped out to Teth. _Yes, he had looked like Kylo Ren, come to think of it…_

But it was dangerous to go out and he was running out of money. He fingered his remaining peggats over and over, trying to find a way that he could stretch them enough to buy a bottle of something, anything. Some dust, some glitterstim. Hunger wouldn’t matter, then.

But hunger _did_ matter. He couldn’t blow his winnings on drugs when Blagg and the other stablehands counted out every palmful of food they were given, dividing it between them with the courteous dignity of the very poor.

A couple of times he called Blagg over anyway, but pride stopped his mouth before he could ask him to go to the dealer’s dive under the boardwalk. “Nothing,” he said. “Or, no, get some bread at the market.” And held out his poor coins.

Blagg and the other stablehands took them and brought back food which Kylo felt obliged to share with them.

“Generosity,” said Luke, a shadow materialising briefly in the folds of a hanging saddle-cloth after the children left. “Old habit, but persistent, isn’t it?” He met Kylo’s glare for a long moment, then shrugged and faded away.

Every time Kylo shared his food he heard Snoke’s mocking voice in his head, _So you’ve become a nursemaid to these street rats?_ Kylo’s smile only stretched wider over his teeth and he continued doling out what the children brought him from the market. They smiled in return, bright eyes fixed on his as they held out their hands. Then they left him to deal with his demons on his own. And he had plenty of demons. The drugs he’d been taking threatened to claw half his flesh off as they left his system.

It was in this long darkness, alone above the slow-breathed sleeping fathier, that he began to see how much of his life had been an illusion. As he shivered and sweated and itched, Snoke’s visions rose before him. _The halls of power._ Those words had plucked at his soul for years; in Snoke’s mouth they did not mean the busy hallways where politicians did business, but somewhere older and darker where another power slept. Black stone buildings, red-lit by a baleful sun in a desert valley. Some day Kylo would take command of his true domain, drawing strength from some ancient evil that awaited his touch like a lover’s kiss. And on the way there, he’d walk over the backs of the multitude, treading on their mute, terrified acceptance.

No-one could hurt him in his palace of darkness.

He could have anything he desired.

Snoke had never asked him what he desired. Instead he’d made him an offer. _You want an end to this pain, don’t you? This conflict inside you? You know you can never be what your parents want. Let me show you where you belong._

Alone in the fathier stables, Kylo dreamed of a fire that burned the galaxy down. He walked in darkness and the stars shining down on him were a million eyes making one accusation. He writhed and sweated and tried to answer their question, but he didn’t understand. Or in one fever-lucid moment he _knew,_ but his mouth was clagged with dust and he couldn’t say. Then Snoke was there again, reaching down to pick him up easily from where he lay on the hard ground. _Just a little further._ And Kylo followed, one foot in front of the other while Snoke told him of the stone tower they were heading for, just over the horizon. Their impregnable fortress.

Until one day dreaming Kylo did not take Snoke’s hand. He remained flat, head down, while flowers of fire opened around him, each one a hammer blow in the blackness. Space and spaceships consumed in an ecstasy of flame. Kylo kept the weight of his body over his own hands, pinning them down. _He would not—_

Snoke spat contempt at him, ordered him, screamed at him, and Kylo gripped the thumb of his trigger hand so hard the black leather of his gauntlets split. He wouldn’t push down on the trigger. _Not then, not now, not ever._ Snoke’s fury split the sky and rained down red-hot needles that merged with the pain of drug withdrawal.

Gradually the hallucinations were replaced by waves of nausea that left Kylo shaking, teetering on his rafter, his trigger hand crushed numb beneath him. But he was clear-headed and his dreams were gone. He would never stride through the galaxy with Snoke and rule an Empire.

He sat up, head bumping against the roof-beams, and wrapped his tattered cloak around him. When he pushed his sweaty hair off his forehead, there was dust and straw stuck to it. Fittingly enough. Kylo Ren, the Emperor of Dust and Straw. He laughed shortly and raised his hand, reaching out with the Force to make a glob of water rise out of Dancing Boy’s drinking trough. It wobbled its way up to him and he doused his head with it. It was the kind of dumb stunt young padawans tried. But it made him smile, and the fresh water felt good as it ran off his face and hair. He rubbed his cheeks clean, and the gaunt ridges of his cheekbones pressed into the hollows of his palms.

* * *

 

It was another evening, and again the children squatted on the floor of Dancing Boy’s stall while the fathier swayed happily over his manger, eating too.

“He’d be less happy if he realised we were eating Chilla’s Hope,” said Sar. Chilla’s Hope had fulfilled Bargwill’s prediction and bolted into an electrified barrier on her first race.

“I didn’t ask for pies,” said Kylo.

“I forgot to tell you. Teezia’s mum gave us these. Here’s your coins back,” said Sar.

Kylo looked closely at the pie in his hand. Too late, he’d eaten half of it. “Why?” he asked.

Sar tossed her red curls and shrugged. “She said you’d know.”

Kylo didn’t. But that brought up a bigger problem. “How does she know you’re buying food for _me?_ ”

“I don’t know. She just does.” Sar caught Kylo’s frown and said, “We didn’t tell her!”

“You can use the Force on us to check we’re not lying,” said Zaya cheerfully.

“Of course _Hux_ lies,” said Tack stoutly, returning to an argument that had gone on for days. “General Leia said…”

“Shush!” Zaya pushed Tack over with his foot, not roughly, but definitely. “He hates hearing about Leia…” Zaya hooked his thumb in Kylo’s direction. “I think,” he whispered theatrically “…they’ve _met!_ They’re _enemies!”_

Kylo pretended not to hear, and the children resumed their discussion of his mother’s rally. “They say it’ll be the biggest crowd ever seen in Warlentta’s Government Square. Can you imagine?” asked Sar.

As though in answer, there was a distant roar from the streets outside the stables. Blagg and Sar ran out, and came back in a moment later, panting. “Look up! Look up! The Star Destroyers are gone!” They all went out. It was true; for the first time in weeks, there were no brutal blank wedges smothering the stars above Canto Bight.

“See!” said Blagg triumphantly. “Even here, the First Order is afraid of Leia.”

“She will announce the revival of the New Republic at that rally, you know,” said Sar, turning to Kylo. “You should go watch the holocast. Even if you don’t like her, it’s history being made. Everyone says so.”

“You go, enjoy it,” said Kylo, ignoring the way every mention of the rally made his stomach flip. “It’s all just politics, you know. General Leia, General Hux. What difference does it make? You won’t see any changes here.”

The disappearance of the Star Destroyers should have made Kylo feel better, but instead it lent spurs to his sense of dread. _Where had they gone? Why?_ He considered calling on Rey, but he’d been blocking their Force bond for weeks. What would she make of Kylo, shivering his way through drug withdrawal? Half of Niima Outpost was addicted to something; Rey had had a will of steel, to stride daily through that human wreckage and remain uncorrupted.

The note of warning sounded louder and louder as days went by. Kylo ventured outside. A few security patrols, easily avoided, were all that remained of the clamp-down that had held the city in suspense for weeks. All news of the First Order was silent. _What were they doing?_

When he finally reached out to Rey again, he found her as restless and lonely as when he’d last seen her. He caught an impression of mauve sky, green leaves. But she was alone again, and thinking of Luke for some reason. _Did you ever see the funny side of him?_ she asked.

 _Funny?_ Luke randomly manifesting out of folded saddle-cloths or blotches of moss on the wall weren’t that. But Kylo wasn’t about to share anything about Luke’s ghost. _Funny?_ He was more patient than Kylo remembered him in life. Perhaps if Kylo hadn’t been so constantly on edge every moment of his time at the Jedi Academy…He wasn’t about to share that, either. _Have you fixed that lightsaber yet?_ he asked instead. And received a halting, clumsy invitation to help her work on it tonight, her time.

When the bond connected them later, she was alone with the lightsaber. It was less of a shock now, seeing the weapon he’d dreamed of for so long in her hands instead of his. He ran a finger over the broken crystal she held. He couldn’t really feel it; just the warmth from her hand, steady under his fingers despite her nervousness. Funny how the mantle of teacher fell so naturally on him; without thinking, he spoke to Rey the same way he spoke to Temiri Blagg. She listened, alert and serious; it was obvious from her remarks how easily she grasped his ideas. He could get dangerously comfortable with this kind of attention. Dangerous, because it woke that ache under his ribs. His heart thumped painfully as Rey held up the crystal, the light of it smoothing her face into cool lines, impossibly beautiful.

“I love you, little crystal. Even though you are broken,” she said, her voice a clear music. _Lover of broken things._ Kylo’s heart convulsed in pain as though she’d cut him open again. The Force responded with a hard thunderclap, and his connection to Rey broke. Kylo found himself back in the stable.

“Gah!” He hit the stone floor with his fist. Dancing Boy leaned down his big head and flicked an ear, concerned. “Nothing,” said Kylo. “I was so close to seeing if she could do it, that’s all.” The fathier sighed heavily.

The next day, though, he woke before dawn with a sense of worse dread than before. _Warning! Warning!_ But when he tried to connect with Rey there was nothing except a terrible greyness clogging the bond between them. Was she even there?

Temiri Blagg came in early, hoping for a lesson before he started work, but Kylo waved him away. The same with Sar, when she came to hose out the stable. He shut out the bustle of the stableyard, breathed the rank air in long gusts, and tried to centre himself in the Force. Finally, a flicker of …something. Light. _Rey._ But so feeble!

Frustrated, Kylo gave up and went out into the streets of Canto Bight, where his feet took him to the landing field. It was clear of First Order ships. Nobody else had come in yet. Something terrible was happening, and he was trapped here.

He caught sight of Teezia’s mother approaching along the perimeter fence. Something about her was different. She straightened up - she was taller than he remembered - and waved to him. Kylo left before she could get close enough to talk to him. Prowling the streets at random, he arrived at a terrace overlooking the Archway Market. It was just past noon, and there was a subtle change in the mood of the city. Holoscreens were set up at either end of the Market and whatever they were broadcasting was charging up the crowd.

Just then the stablehands came pelting past Kylo, shouting that Bargwill had given them a half-day off. “Come and watch! It’s the General’s big speech.”

“General _Hux,_ I hope,” said a tall, faded-looking Twi’lek bystander in a well-cut tunic.

“Screw him!” said Zaya, and kicked the Twi’lek on the shins. The man staggered and raised a fist. The children ran off down the steps to the Market, laughing and chanting “Leia! Leia! Leia!”. Others took up the cry. An angry murmur of disagreement started at the other end of the square.

Just then Kylo felt a sudden softness in the Force, the walls between him and Rey giving way. Shutting out the uproar around him, he reached for her. Her presence was dim, her image wavering. She seemed sick. “Rey, what’s happening?” he asked.

“It’s your mother. She’s about to give a big speech.”

“I know.” From his vantage point he could just make out the screens around the Market. A wide shot of the rally, the stage. That white dot in front of the Resistance banner was Leia. Kylo’s heart started to hammer. Something was terribly wrong. He began jogging towards the stairway down to the Market, desperate to see.

Meanwhile Rey was telling him that she’d been drugged. That explained why their connection was so blurred and weak. Yet, sick as she was, Rey still had that bright determination of hers. She would run straight into danger, and nothing he said would stop her.

Kylo shut out his surroundings and concentrated. He found he could push through the strange dragging influence of the drug and open up Rey’s link to the Force. She took hold immediately, not stopping to question it, and launched herself out somewhere he couldn’t see. She was falling and catching herself, running, almost willing herself to where Leia stood onstage. She couldn’t fly, but she did her best. Kylo ran too, pushing his way over to the nearest holoscreen, trying to make out Rey’s figure among the thousands at the rally.

All those thousands… They weren’t just on the screen, they were around him; crowds in the Market and around Rey on Warlentta, everything making a confusion of life and feeling. Somewhere in there, a dark pulse of evil. He tried to hone in on it. Then he was losing Rey in the stream of living Force that surrounded them all. It was too much. The link between them unravelled and Rey slipped away.

By now he was in front of the holoscreens. In faraway Warlentta, the crowd suddenly staggered as though flattened by a giant hand. The imager wobbled and canted up. A Star Destroyer blocked the sky, just as it had done on Canto Bight. The people around Kylo echoed the roar of dismay they heard on-screen. Then _there,_ just at the corner of the screen! A shot that spat out of the crowd straight to the stage. A hole punched in Kylo’s chest. His hands flew to protect himself, too late. Then he snatched his hands away and looked down in horrified wonder, for there was no wound on his body, just terrible, terrible pain.

Then looking up and knowing already what was there. The imagers on Warlentta rocking, shaking as they tried to zoom in. Leia’s body fallen in the centre of the stage, the people around her making a frozen backdrop, arms thrown up in horror. Kylo’s throat tore in one long howl of pain.

The Force smashing down on him like a breaking wave. People were shouting and pushing all around Kylo, crying and panicking. But for him, for one instant, there was stillness, and a familiar voice in his ear, low and creaky.

_But you had such a brightness about you. I thought you’d be…_

_And I will be that man!_ Kylo shouted to the fading presence. A light touch on his chest, and she was gone. She’d spared him that last gesture his father had made, at least. Though his face hurt anyway, aching for what he would never feel again. No hand on his cheek, now or ever again. Only his own tears.

His knees gave way and he fell to his knees on the rough dusty paving. _Dead!_ That hot, bright spirit gone. Even when he’d hated her, her presence had lit his world. The purposes that had driven her, the engine of her life, always running in the background of his own. _Leia had wanted so much!_ All lost, all flying apart into nothingness. She’d died with her work undone.

The world seemed drained of colour. People surged around him, but they might as well have been ghosts. Their mouths moved and made senseless noise.

Something made him look up. On-screen, he could finally see Rey. She must have clawed back some connection to the Force herself, for she made it up onto the stage in one leap. The dread in his heart told him what was going to happen next: the skimmer flying around from the side of the stage, a flash of light, Rey crumpling to the floor. Somebody leapt out of the skimmer and threw her in like a sack of grain before the machine accelerated away. Warlentta police speeders roared in hot pursuit, but a suborbital jumper was already swooping down from the Star Destroyer to meet the skimmer.

Rey couldn’t be dead. They wouldn’t bother picking up a dead body. She was a prisoner. Or a hostage.

Somebody was crying beside Kylo, grabbing his arm, screaming at him. He looked down. The stablehands were crushed around him, sobbing. “They killed Leia!”

“I know, I know!” he said. Somehow he was caught in a knot of people who cared, who were crying with him, distraught, though they could not know what Leia meant to him. The children clung to him as though he were their rock in a sea of people pushing and yelling around them. His life suddenly becoming a holodrama. It was like being a different person - a person who could bend down and sweep them all up into a fierce embrace, a person who didn’t shrink from the tearful faces pressed against his.

“I promise you one thing!” he fixed each of them in turn with a long glare. “Somebody’s going to pay for this.” He turned to go, ready to forget them immediately. For him, there was only revenge and a rescue, and the Force rising up like a tide to bear him away.

But he still couldn’t move. Now Teezia’s mother was in his path, grabbing his other arm. She had more strength and heft than he’d imagined. “The Maker bless you!” she cried, and pulled him down to kiss both of his cheeks. She looked up at the taste of salt on his face and saw his grief. “She was the mother of us all, I know. It’s terrible what they did. We’re all crying. But you,” — she jabbed a lean finger at his chest —“It’s the good people like you that balance it out. I feel it!”

 _“Good?_ I haven’t done any good anywhere. But I swear I’m going to kill Hux!” Kylo spat, and tried to shake her off.

“Mother! Mother! Did you see?” cried another voice, somehow familiar. “Somebody shot Leia!” A moment later a girl with a round, freckled face appeared, shoving her way out of a gap in the crowd. It was Teezia. She stopped, and her blonde curls bounced as her head whipped between her mother and Kylo. “Oh Mother, _look_ at you! It’s true! You’re cured! You look beautiful!” Kylo suddenly found himself caught in another group hug he couldn’t escape. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Teezia wept.

“What? I—” Kylo backed away, but Teezia wouldn’t let go. She was wringing his hand, face alight with some emotion that made no sense to him at all.

“Your _medicines!_ My mother is completely cured.” She pushed her mother forward so Kylo could see how she’d put on weight. She was standing straight and her skin was smooth. “All it needed was _one_ course of drugs. All these years she’s suffered. Those bastards in the First Order had the drugs all along, but we couldn’t _get_ them!” She tried to hug Kylo again, but the look on his face made her step back in a hurry.

“I haven’t got _time!_ ” he shouted. The whole situation was unreal. His mother was dead and he owed her an ocean of First Order blood, and here he was, stuck in this knot of people who were trying to thank him to death.

Just then something hard bumped his leg. He looked down. It was Niney. She looked freshly polished and somehow smug.

“Here’s your astromech droid,” said Teezia hastily. “She’s very clever. I’ve never seen one that can talk before.”

Kylo grabbed his pounding head to shut them all out. He was burning up. But there were no targets for his fury: not these weeping, thankful women, nor the stablehands still hovering around waiting for direction, nor the droid beside him tweedling happily about success.

Teezia reached into her bag and handed him a smaller bag containing something long and heavy. Even before she put it in his hand he knew it, the eager way it jumped into the palm of his hand. His lightsaber. “Tuaua went back to the Collector who bought this and, you know…” She flashed him a wary smile. “Mother said how much it meant to you…It was the least we could do…”

Kylo’s smile in return was a half-crazed show of teeth, but she didn’t seem to expect anything more.

He snatched the lightsaber and finally freed himself from the two women. He started to push his way out of the marketplace. Niney fell in behind him, twittering with satisfaction. “I stole the medicines from the First Order and told Teezia’s mother you sent them,” she explained. “So of course she told Teezia…”

“Where are you going? Take us with you!” Blagg and the others reappeared, catching at his sleeve, heels digging into the cobblestones to slow him down.

“No. Stay here. Keep doing what you’re doing. Keep training,” said Kylo, grabbing words at random. “Listen to your instincts. Mine tell me you won’t be here forever.” That was all he could give them; he shook them off and the surging crowd forced them apart.

“May the Force be with you!” they shouted in their piping voices. Kylo raised a hand to them and ran towards the spaceport. Nothing else mattered now. He had to get out and get revenge. The first ship that touched down would be _his,_ no matter who tried to get in his way.

Dodging down alleys, people falling out of his way in a wave, either the Force or his sheer anger cutting a path through the crowd, until he reached the landing field.

They found the _Pretty Thing_ parked at Paw Paw Teng’s workshop. The wind kicked up a dust-devil and for an instant Luke was there, leaning on one of the landing struts. He nodded gravely to Kylo. “It’s time.” His form faded in the middle of making an archaic gesture, perhaps a bow, or kneeling, hand extended towards Kylo, or the ship.

“I have the entry codes for that, if you don’t want to blast out the lock,” said Niney.

Kylo nodded. A moment later the hatch opened and the ramp was down. Kylo took a quick look at the ship’s sleek lines, and ran up into the cockpit. Everything inside was smooth and discreetly luxurious. He fired up the engines, listened to their rich, powerful rumble for an instant, then slammed down the joystick. They were off.

Rey was out there somewhere. He would find her. The Force would guide him, and he would rescue her and get revenge on the people who’d killed his mother.

 

——


	20. Rey Imprisoned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey finds herself on a First Order interrogation chair for the second time in her life, and she has nothing to help her this time, not even the Force. But if her childhood on Jakku did nothing else, it made her a survivor. 
> 
> \- - - -

“So, we’re supposed to believe _you_ killed Snoke.”

Rey cracked open an eyelid. The one that could open. The other one felt swollen and bruised. She’d woken like this often enough on Jakku after losing a fight, and she knew better than to attempt anything more. One eye open gave her a bleary view of a tall man whose pallor was accentuated by his black uniform. His reddish hair made a spot of colour in a room that was, as far as her vision allowed, grey and devoid of details. A pair of stormtroopers stood stiffly by the door behind the man. A faint vibration through the durasteel floor under her cheek suggested large engines at work, and she guessed they were in space.

“Or was that a convenient lie from our last Supreme Leader?” Rey must have looked blank, for he added, “Kylo Ren.”

“Who are you?” Rey asked, and immediately felt stupid as her vision cleared further. She’d seen footage of General Hux; he’d been pushing the First Order’s agenda on the galaxy through regular holocasts. Of course she recognised the voice. It was just that…as a former scavenger from Jakku, it was not a voice she’d ever expected to hear in person. And yet, here she was again, thrown into conversation with another one of the galaxy’s leaders. Another legend.

Not a happy legend, from the Resistance point of view.

Hux walked over to her, and Rey became aware of how helpless she was; not only was she lying on the floor, arms and legs bound, but the same soggy resistance she’d felt before seemed to block her connection to the Force. She must have been drugged again.

Hux stared down at her expressionlessly for a while, then kicked her. She hadn’t given him any reason that she could see, but people like him, in her experience, didn’t need a reason. He kicked her because she was lying on the floor in front of him, and he could. “General Hux,” he said.

Rey dug her nails into the palm of one hand, fixing on that small pain to pull her attention away from the larger pain where the toe of his boot had connected with her ribs. Tall, shiny black boots planted on the floor in front of her face. Their owner no doubt considering whether to kick her again.

“You should be thanking me,” said Rey, steadying her voice as much as she could over the stabbing pain in her ribs. “With Snoke gone, you’re the Supreme Leader now.”

A slight shifting of weight between the boots in her view, and she tensed for another blow. But then Hux unexpectedly laughed, a hard braying sound. Rey twisted her body cautiously so she could look up at his face. Yes, he did look amused, though there was a good deal of cruelty in his smile too.

He turned with a sharp swivel on his heels and walked away to the far end of the cell. Rey used the time to pull herself half into a sitting position, leaning against one of the walls. There was a shelf-like bed set into another wall, but she had no desire to crawl over to it and risk waking any more of the aches and pains in her body.

“I don’t like it when a prisoner - who is _supposed_ to be bound and helpless and under our control - does away with the Supreme Leader.” Hux was frowning now. “It sets a bad precedent.”

“It worked out pretty well for you,” said Rey doggedly.

Hux gave a dismissive snort, as though what she’d given him wasn’t enough. “Maybe. I’m more interested in what you can tell me now, though. You’re close to the core of the Resistance.”

Rey’s memory of her last moments on Warlentta came crashing back. Leia, lifeless on the stage, her face a white mask. Wisps of smoke from the burnt fabric around the hole in her chest. Rey groaned, and a sharp bile climbed her throat.

“Remember now, do you?” Hux walked over, slow deliberate steps clacking on the durasteel deck. “And what was your place in all that?” He gloated over her, eyes sharp with curiosity. “You were kept in the background yet…surely you were being groomed for something. Ren seemed to think you were important. Maybe a successor to that unholy matriarchy, yes?”

“I’m nobody,” said Rey reflexively. But in her mind arose an image of Finn and Poe. They’d be the fury and fire heading the Resistance now. And Rose…She would be its heart. Finn and Poe deferred to her judgement. The First Order would learn in time that they underestimated Rose at their peril. The vision persisted for a moment, then Rey pushed it out of her mind with an inward snarl. This was the Force in her, coolly examining the pieces of its pattern clicking into place while Rey’s heart bled for what she’d lost. It should be comforting to know she had this much connection to the Force, at least. Maybe later she would feel it as a benefit; for now, she rejected it with a groan. It was disgusting and heartless to be analysing Leia’s death like this already.

“You’ll tell us what you are, and what you know,” said Hux, relishing each clipped syllable. “Our interrogators will find it all out.”

He did another one of his marionette-like heel swivels and exited. The two stormtroopers, who had not moved throughout, now stepped forward. They must have had some device that released the manacles on her hands and ankles; they clattered off onto the floor and the stormtroopers collected them. One of them dropped a bundle of folded clothes on the bunk. "You'll wear these now," he said. Then they too left, and the door closed almost seamlessly into the durasteel walls. Rey stared at it dully. Hux had given no indication of when her interrogation would begin. Immediately? Later? Tomorrow? How could she even tell the time here?

Life on Jakku had taught Rey that there were things that could not be altered through one’s own efforts. Sandstorms either stopped before you ran out of food and water, or they didn’t. Prices for scrap either rose on the back of galactic markets, or they fell (or so Plutt said). No amount of worrying or scheming could change that. Rey kept a box in her mind where she could throw all the useless worries that would otherwise consume her. The future might be bad; in this case it was most assuredly going to be bad. But what would she gain by picturing the interrogation chair to herself, or trying to guess when she’d be strapped into it again? Poe had never spoken of his time under First Order interrogation. There was no point trying to imagine it ahead of time. Best to throw it into that box in her mind that she never opened.

The worry box. Time and disappointment had made it into a thing of solid durasteel, and all thoughts of the future belonged in there. Its weight - and the effort to contain the thoughts inside - were part of who she was. She was no darling of the Resistance, to lie on soft beds and know where her next meal was coming from. Some part of her had never expected that to last. Rey was not a person with friends. Not one of a team. She was a survivor. Rey found the old familiar routines forming around her. Endurance was familiar territory to Rey.

One of her old habits was soothing herself with a checklist of all that was good. She was still alive. She moved her limbs cautiously. Largely undamaged, despite the various pains. Not hungry or thirsty (yet. She pushed that thought away). Not dangerously hot or cold.

Nothing happened (and that was good too). Eventually Rey risked the pain in her arms and stomach - (where hadn’t they beaten her? And had she been conscious at the time?) - and crawled up onto the bed. The bundle of clothes left there proved to be a simple black tunic and pants. They were clean and soft. Her own clothes were torn and stiff with blood. The smell of them was disgusting. With an effort, she got changed and pulled the one blanket around herself. Looking on the bright side, it was better quality than anything she’d had on Jakku. Clean and new, too. Add it to the list.

To-do list for later: figure out how she was being drugged to stifle her Force sensitivity. If she could counteract it, she could overcome everything else.

She fell asleep gnawing on another idea: the way, in her last connection to Ben, he’d been able to strengthen her access to the Force. Could he do it again? Their bond was so fickle. Right now, Rey couldn’t reach either him or her own Force powers. But it might just be a matter of waiting for him to look for her.

Waiting was another thing she was good at.

She woke up some time later, alerted by a clatter of armoured feet in the corridor outside. For a moment she was disoriented, still dreaming she was in her ATAT on Jakku. The harsh echoing footsteps outside made no sense in her dreamworld of dunes and wind. Then the door snicked open and the cell was suddenly crowded with four stormtroopers. She sat up, and pain flared all over her body. A man in a black uniform came in last, followed by a hovering black medical droid like a malignant round insect. Like an insect, it had a stinger. Before she could even think to struggle, stormtroopers held Rey down while it shot an ampoule of some clear liquid into her arm. Rey had no time to test the strength of her Force connection; the now-familiar dullness spread through her system and the people around her became flatter, as though missing some dimension whose presence she had always taken for granted.

Rather than struggle, with the blows that would undoubtedly earn her, Rey made herself into a dead weight and allowed the stormtroopers to drag her along a few short corridors. If her Force senses were dulled, her physical ones were not; she watched closely, noting the way the deck and wall plating was fastened, where the structural beams might lie behind them, how the air vents and power ducts might run above them. She had travelled the vast dark silences of wrecked Star Destroyers before by holding their schematics mapped in her mind. It was a habit to do it now; whether it would be any use, it was too early to tell.

The interrogation room on this Star Destroyer was much as she remembered the last one. The chair right in the middle, making its occupant the star and only performer. When she saw it, she couldn’t help reacting. She lashed out with all her arms and legs at once. But there was one stormtrooper for each limb, and despite all her cunning and a lifetime of taking opponents by surprise, she couldn’t escape them. Not even close. They strapped her into the chair, and all her aches and bruises came back tenfold.

The stormtroopers took up stations around the perimeter of the room, and the medtech with the droid was replaced by another man in a black uniform. He was thin and balding, and carried a datapad. Reading from it, he glanced up briefly and said, “Name?”

“Rey.”

“Rey who?” he asked.

“That’s the only name I have,” she said.

The man stared at her, and continued staring. Rey stared back. The man had no distinguishing features. He was perhaps middle-aged, and there was nothing on his face to suggest he made his living torturing people. That was perhaps the most chilling thing: whatever he’d done, it left no imprint of guilt or pleasure.

“Where are you from, Rey?” he said eventually. Rey told him. The questions continued, mainly about Rey’s background, and Rey answered. There was nothing about her early life that could be of any use to the First Order. Then the questions switched to her escape from Jakku and her capture by Kylo Ren. This was more difficult. They already knew she had the Force; they might not know what it could do. Rey played up her ignorance. She hadn’t known about the Force. She’d asked the guard to release her restraints last time she was in an interrogation chair, and he’d done it. She hadn’t known why, it was just an idea that came to her. Maybe the guard had liked her? She didn’t know why Kylo Ren had left in a hurry before that. He wanted to know about a map, but she didn’t have it. He’d got upset and left.

“But you did have the map. The map to Luke Skywalker,” said the interrogator. There was a trace of satisfaction, perhaps, that he’d caught her in a lie.

“No, the droid had the map.”

“But you found Luke Skywalker. He was seen on Crait.”

Rey thought quickly. Luke was dead and she doubted there was anything left on Ahch-To that the First Order could use. The sacred texts were on the Millennium Falcon. The Temple had been, well, a tree. The sea-cave…she imagined lines of stormtroopers walking into the dark mirror, and seeing only more lines of stormtroopers. _How depressing for them._ From what Finn had told her, they didn’t know who their parents were either. But for now, Rey’s only concern was for Ahch-To’s caretakers; they hadn’t liked Rey, but their centuries of gentle service didn’t deserve to be repaid with an attack from the First Order.

Plus it would look suspicious if Rey gave away too much too easily. So she shook her head. “The droid knows the way. I don’t.”

The interrogator gave a satisfied grunt, perhaps pleased to find some sign of opposition. He reached over and flipped a switch on a control panel on the wall beside him. Suddenly the braces around her head tightened and delivered a blaze of pain. It dug in under her scalp and burned its way down her spine to meet an equal pain coming from her hands and feet. She felt like her whole body was in a furnace.

A moment or a year later, the pain stopped. The interrogator was noting something down on his datapad. He looked up. Rey drew in slow, deep drafts of air, trying to control the spasming of her ribs.

“So, the map to Luke Skywalker?” he asked pleasantly, as though nothing had happened.

“I haven’t got it.”

“Where is Luke Skywalker?” he asked, leaning in closer.

“I don’t know.”

She gritted her teeth as he moved over to the wall panel. The switch came down again, and again her body burned in a furnace.

When it was over, Rey didn’t have to feign her deadweight limpness. The four stormtroopers hauled her back to her cell, her heels dragging on the floor behind them.

Small movements. Small thoughts. Nothing that might wake the pain again. Or shame…what had she told them? _He is one with the Force, he is one with the Force!_ Had she named Ahch-To?

Well if she had, it couldn’t be unsaid.

 _Checklist. Pain/damage?_ Rey held up her arm, turned it carefully. It should have been blistered, roasted, burnt to the bone. But her skin was unmarked. So the interrogation chair gave pain, but the only damage was the strain of her own muscles clenching in response.

Another small thought, a risky one: _Food/water?_ Relief: Somebody had placed a pan of each on the floor by the door.

 _Hot/cold?_ Again, the cell was tolerable.

Rey crawled across the floor to the bowls. She finished the food - a sweet-salt paste, vaguely disgusting - and drank the water in little sips, then moved herself stiffly onto the bed. The blanket was still good. _Check._

After a while she was ready for the larger thoughts. _Had_ she told her interrogator anything important? She had stalled, but how much? Eventually she’d told him the general location of Ahch-To. She didn’t know it in detail, anyway. Maybe it had been fresh in her mind when Kylo first questioned her, but now?

The interrogator had been disappointed. She could only give him Luke, and a tree, and a cave. Some old Jedi texts. Rey didn’t reveal that she’d taken them, because she wasn’t asked. Instead she went into more and more detail about them, leading her interrogator on to believe they held powerful secrets. She didn’t reveal that Luke was dead either, again because she wasn’t asked such a direct question. So perhaps they would waste time going to Ahch-To to learn that for themselves.

Later they would ask her about the Resistance. This, she feared. She didn’t want to remember the people who had been, if only for a brief time, like a family to her. To remember was to betray. Rey couldn’t hold out against the torture for ever. She had some small comfort knowing that the Resistance would change all its plans, knowing she’d been captured. And Rey had kept herself away from the heart of the planning. Now a small selfish part of her wished she’d known more. More she could give her interrogator, so the torture would end sooner.

But she didn’t know. And what she did know, the Resistance would avoid. There was nothing she could give the First Order.

It disturbed Rey that she could not mark the walls of her cell to count the passing of time. She might be here a hundred years and there would be no record of her imprisonment. She had nothing hard enough to mark these durasteel walls.

The dishes of food and water were the only things to mark the time. Twice a day they were pushed through a flap in the wall beside the door. From the guards’ remarks, Rey learned that the bowls were supposed to be some sort of insult; something an animal would drink from. Rey shrugged. She’d drunk from a trough in Jakku and that was worse. At least this water was clean.

The interrogations fell into a routine. Having established where the power lay, her interrogator seemed to feel that further torture was unnecessary. In any case, on the second day they gave Rey a another drug, one that made her lie bonelessly in the interrogation chair and babble on about whatever she was asked. She couldn’t keep her mind on what he was asking, and rambled on, finding the strangest things funny. One moment she was giggling about Chewie allowing the porgs to colonise his beloved Millennium Falcon, the next thing she could remember, she was describing how Kylo deceived Snoke so he could kill him, and giggling about that too. Her interrogator seemed neither amused nor angry; she thought later that the drug must make everyone act the fool. No point blushing about it.

So long as Rey kept talking, he didn’t press the switch that dealt the pain; after that second session, it seemed clear that Rey had little tactical knowledge that could help the First Order. “They appear and they disappear,” she told him. “They’ve done that for years and years. It’s the thing they do best. It’s who they are. They must have a thousand hidden bases. Hyperspace lanes they don’t tell anyone about. I was new, and they would never tell me unless I needed to know.”

Answers like that made her wait, fists clenched in her restraints, breath clenched in her lungs, for the pain. But the man simply nodded, made a note on his holopad. Apparently it was standard for Resistance operatives to know very little.

“Politically, then. You were seen with General Organa at many high-level meetings. What were her goals?”

Again, Rey hadn’t seen Leia do anything unexpected. She was building a coalition, of course. Winning over the systems that were unallied. Nothing the First Order couldn’t deduce for itself. If there was any backroom scheming, Rey was not privy to it. Her interrogator dug and dug for more details, but there was simply nothing she could say that could come as any revelation.

Rey had a shrewd idea of her own position in the Resistance: Leia hadn’t found a use for her beyond making her a symbol. Now this questioner was discovering what was behind the symbol: an uneducated young woman from nowhere. Imperturbable as he was, Rey could read his face well enough to know that nothing she said surprised him. Even when she was blabbing about Snoke’s murder by Kylo, his face showed she was merely confirming his suspicions.

Whatever she’d spilled when she was under the drug, it hadn’t been of much interest to the First Order. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, Rey couldn’t tell.

General Hux came during the fourth day’s interrogation. He was accompanied by a person in shining chrome armour. A person so tall that Rey thought it was a man until she spoke. She had a coolly musical voice, very patrician and edged with mockery. Her blind-looking helmet tilted down to where Rey lay strapped in the chair. “I expected to be more impressed,” she said. One metal-sheathed hand reached down. Rey tried not to flinch as the icy tip of a finger trailed down her cheek. “The Resistance needed a pretty face to inspire their followers,” said Phasma, her voice cool. “Apparently you’re the best they could find.”

General Hux snorted and looked over at the interrogator. “I read your notes, Lieutenant. Captain Phasma is right, for once. Disappointing is the word.” He stepped over so he was shoulder to shoulder with the metal woman. She was half a head taller than him. “Even if the Lieutenant’s methods hadn’t made you talk yesterday, I’d have had difficulty believing that such a complete ignoramus managed to kill Snoke.”

“I told you it was Kylo Ren, Sir,” said Phasma.

“We _all_ knew it was Kylo Ren!” said Hux viciously. For some reason this came across as an attack of Phasma; she stiffened slightly. “But why was this girl involved? Why was he even meeting with her on the Supremacy?”

“She doesn’t know where Kylo Ren is, if that’s what you’re asking,” put in the interrogator.

“I know. I can read a report!” said Hux. “What use is she, if she’s any use at all?”

“Morale,” said Phasma in her clipped voice. “The Resistance were using her as a figurehead. Claiming some sort of moral superiority through this supposed link with their great Jedi order.”

“Which is why we should execute her. Publicly.”

Rey refused to flinch.

“We’ve already sent _that_ message,” said Phasma coldly. “And it worked because General Leia had a long enough career in politics to make plenty of enemies. Executing this one…” she poked Rey with a steely finger, “…would turn public opinion against us.”

“We don’t need the public to _like_ us. We need them to fear us.”

“How tiresome it would be to begin another reign of terror in the galaxy,” said Phasma, her cool vowels lengthening into a drawl that sounded contemptuous. “We’d do better making the First Order look like the more _attractive_ option.”

Hux stared sourly down at Rey. “Really?” he sneered. But the sneer was aimed at Phasma.

“Really. We’ve already cut the Resistance off at the knees, in terms of morale. We’d do better to show leniency to this ‘brave but misguided young Force user’. Better still, make her one of ours. She could send … a _different_ message.”

“Show them the that the First Order can be worked with, you mean?” Hux said, and his voice took on a sarcastic, sing-song quality. “That even a young Resistance firebrand could see the sense of cooperation once she’s seen what we have to offer?” He gave Rey a thin smile. She narrowed her eyes back at him.

Phasma continued patiently. “Do you think we have an infinitely expendable army, General, to control so many unwilling subjects? Because if we don’t get more systems joining us willingly, I don’t see how we’re going to create that many troops.”

“Make an exhibition of her and they’ll understand that it doesn’t pay to be a hero for the Resistance. Look at her! We could say she’s another of their victims, served up as a sacrifice in their interests.”

“They’ll make her a martyr. Instead we should make her a symbol for _our_ side. Now, when the Resistance has lost anyone else that could serve as a rallying point “

“They’ve still got FN-2187,” said Hux flatly. Rey blinked at hearing Finn’s First Order name. Both Hux and Phasma caught her movement. The angry glances they flicked in her direction betrayed how effective Finn’s holocasts must be. “Know him, do you?” murmured Hux.

“Still,” said Phasma smoothly. “Look at this pretty little thing. So young and innocent. You can’t deny she could be more useful alive than dead.”

“Oh really. Thank you for your analysis, Captain. You’re our expert on matters of morale, after all.” His voice was heavy with contempt. It confirmed the rumours the Resistance had been hearing in recent weeks. All over the galaxy, stormtroopers had been defecting in growing numbers. Clearly there was disagreement in the First Order’s high command over how to deal with it. Now Rey had a ringside seat to this heated feud between Hux and Phasma; a captive audience, so to speak.

Phasma’s blank mask moved deliberately from regarding Rey to staring down at Hux. Abruptly, he turned and left. Phasma watched him go. Though nothing could be read from her stiff body or the gleaming lines of her helmet, Rey was certain that somewhere in the past few moments, Hux had crossed a line with Phasma.

Phasma turned to the interrogator. “But this is the girl Ren was obsessed with. To the point of neglecting his duties. I want to know why.”

She walked over to stand motionless, ramrod straight, facing Rey, and the interrogator, no doubt anxious to please her, moved closer to the control switches that administered pain. Under the implicit threat, Rey talked, though she kept things as vague as she could. She said Kylo seemed to have expected to meet her, but she never knew why. Perhaps it was something Snoke told him. Some Force-users were said to see the future. Rey was carrying his grandfather’s lightsaber the second time they met; Kylo had recognised it at once. Perhaps he had a premonition, and was waiting for a girl to appear with the lightsaber he regarded as his.

Phasma listened intently until the session was over. She didn’t address Rey directly, or treat her as a person at all.

Afterwards, alone in her cell again, Rey turned it over and over in her mind. What tiny access she still had to the Force told her Phasma’s interest mattered. She just didn’t know why.

* * *

 

_If only Ben were here._

The thought came out of nowhere. Strangely, it was never Finn and Rose she imagined coming to rescue her, though Force knew they’d try. She simply couldn’t imagine them bursting, smiling and triumphant, through the door. They’d failed their mission on the _Supremacy_ ….But Ben had _lived_ here by his own choice, for years. She’d seen him here. (The memory of him, shirtless, came uncomfortably to mind. Uncomfortable because it unbalanced her, and she couldn’t afford that.) It had been a bigger room, yes, but like this cell, it had been all hard surfaces, everywhere black or metal. Ben had tried to make his body into something that would fit here. All hard, smooth planes. A plasteel body, overlarge, overbuilt like everything the First Order made. No comfort. But that body was a lie. He was not a part of this machine. When she’d seen him through the Force bond he’d moved towards her like an animal in a cage. A wild creature testing whether the bars that confined it were real.

To know his loneliness, the way the Force allowed her to see inside him, was one thing. To see the place where he suffered was something else. How had he survived, year after year, in this barren, comfortless world?

 _Ben._ Did he know she was taken? Could he feel her in the Force, even though she couldn’t feel him? He must have seen what happened on Warlentta. He’d tried to help, boosting her access to the Force. But was that for her sake, or his mother’s sake?

She reached out, but nothing touched her through her dulled Force senses. So she imagined him; imagined his body here in the cell with her, curled around her like a bulwark against the hostile place. Heat came off him in waves, just as she’d felt it when she’d shared the lift with him. She imagined the weight of his arms lying across her; his strength as he gathered her in to keep her safe. Nobody could know what she imagined: the broken whispers, the caresses, the tears, finally, on Ben’s cheeks.

Even though they were only fantasies, each time there came a moment when she had to look up and face him, and it frightened her. Her breath catching, she delayed, floating in an uncertainty that was delicious and painful at the same time, until she found the courage to tilt her head up and look into his eyes. He was much closer than they had ever been in real life, and she had nothing to give him but a little kindness, and the sympathy of a fellow-prisoner. Sometimes it was not enough, and when she looked up, she saw not Ben but Kylo. Not a fellow-prisoner, but the ruler of this deathly place.

A murderous warlord, Finn had called him. The kind of pitiless leader that earned the respect of that terrible woman Phasma. Even yet, Rey would look up eventually at that remembered face, and offer what she had. It was only her vulnerability and her hope, but her imagination made it enough to break through the anger and bitterness she saw, enough to break through to the fear beneath.

“I’ve known fear all my life,” she whispered to her imaginary bedmate. And she reached out to soothe it away with her words and her hands.

The surveillance cameras would have shown nothing more than a girl lying curled up with tears on her cheeks. She lay absolutely still while her mind conjured up kisses that made her mouth tingle with pleasure. It was so subversive to imagine silencing Kylo Ren with her lips even as he mouthed the First Order’s lies about power and rule. Kylo Ren had been a symbol of the First Order’s evil; in her imagination she defied him, and all of them, by taking his mouth with hers, running her lips and tongue over him until his breath became harsh with need and his hands stroked and kneaded her body. In her mind, she had only to lay her hand on his chest to awaken his lust and through it, his humanity.

In Rey’s imagination, Kylo Ren became Ben, and her body flushed as want became tenderness and passion, and finally trust. She blazed, they burned together in the cold space of the First Order’s sterile hive. In their half-snatched breaths, they mouthed promises to escape.

It was not the whole solution, she knew; neither for Ben nor for the First Order. But it was still a great secret of the light that the Jedi texts never spoke of. People yearned for connection; kindness was a doorway and passion was another. Both together would lift the roof off this durasteel anthill and break down the First Order’s walls in the end, because people wanted more than just to live.

\- - - -


	21. Leaving Canto Bight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for talk of sexual violence
> 
> * * *

They were three hours out of Canto Bight. Kylo sat in the pilot’s seat watching the glassy light of a million stars flow past him. The sense of rushing towards a destination went some way towards soothing the terrible impatience that gnawed at him. But even so, his mother’s death lay like a stone inside of him. It rubbed his insides raw with anger and grief.

A younger Kylo would have jumped up and found something to do, some trouble to cause. Someone to goad into crossing him so he could lash out. But now he was alone in the _Pretty Thing_ except for Niney, who was immune to his moods. She sat snugged into the co-pilot’s seat, ticking quietly to herself in a satisfied way.

“Why do you stare into space?” she asked, breaking a long silence “There’s nothing out there.”

“It’s full of things,” said Kylo. “Stars, space, time. Everything in the galaxy that’s alive…” And the Force, binding them all together, he thought. And Rey, like a lamp almost extinguished, or muffled by thick glass. Somewhere out there, the First Order had her at their mercy. His heart accelerated as though it could make the ship go faster. For the hundredth time he reached into the Force, searching for a way to batter down the barrier between them.

“But you can’t see them,” said Niney.

Kylo grunted noncommittally. It wasn’t something he could explain. As he stared into the flickering void, its random pulses trembled on the edge of meaning. There had to be some bridge between space, time, and the Force, but if anyone had ever found it, the knowledge was lost. Every Force-user Kylo had ever met did the same thing when they went to lightspeed: stared into the streaming lights as though trying to find something. To see the galaxy and all its life laid out clearly through space and time, the Force connecting them all.

“Where are we going?” said Niney, breaking another silence.

“The Unknown Regions. There’s a few places we’re likely to find them.”

“Serillon Station,” said Niney.

“How did you know?” Kylo asked, eyebrows raised.

“I spent time slicing into First Order comms. Enough recent signals originate there to suggest it’s still one of their main staging posts.”

Kylo nodded, his estimation of Niney rising again. “Did you get an idea of their forces?”

“Three Star Destroyers, but they’re all undermanned. None of them have a full complement of support vessels, and they’re requisitioning a lot of replacement parts.”

Kylo gave a satisfied grunt. “Hux would have declared himself outright ruler of the galaxy by now if he had the forces to back his claim. But the First Order’s finding it difficult to hold down even the systems who’ve capitulated.”

“So what’s the plan? Are you going to rush in there and cut everyone down personally with your lightsaber?”

Kylo gave her a sour look but didn’t answer.

“I can’t wait,” she continued. “I’ll be right behind you, thanks to my loyalty circuits.”

“Your loyalty circuits still work?” Kylo was sceptical of that; nothing this droid did suggested she was subject to any kind of slavish cybernetic devotion. Her scheme to win over Teezia and recover his lightsaber had gone far beyond any normal droid behaviour. It was unthinkable for a droid to have ambition, or to enjoy mayhem, yet both things applied to Niney.

“My diagnostics regarding that are inconclusive.” With that she swivelled her main sensors away from him and examined the readouts on the navcomp instead. After a moment however, she continued. “We need an army.”

She had a point. But Kylo’s family history was full of lone missions against impossible odds. “We’re going to get Rey and kill Hux. Anyone who gets in my way will die,” he said.

The words sounded stupid as soon as he said them. The kind of grandiose thing a Skywalker would say. That sound at the edge of Kylo’s hearing was undoubtedly Luke’s ghost groaning. Niney didn’t even dignify it with a reply.

“What about the Knights of Ren?” she said, after another long silence.

“What about them?” said Kylo. “How do you even know about them?”

Niney held up her slicing terminal. “I accessed some sensitive data while I was on the _Exterminator._

“Spying on me, were you?”

“A droid enabled with psychological profiling chips would note how you automatically jump to the most negative conclusions from the data presented to you. No, I was curious about Snoke.”

“What about him?” said Kylo sullenly. The idea of learning Snoke’s secrets was attractive, in a sickly way. _Thinking about him, looking for reasons, justifications, coming to terms with the past…it was just another wormhole I could lose myself in._ Kylo shuddered. _Another drug._

“Snoke did not intend for you to operate alone,” said Niney. “He was creating a group of Force-users to serve as his army.”

Kylo snorted. “Creating, and destroying. He spent as much time tearing them down as he did recruiting and training them.”

“That sounds inefficient.”

“According to Snoke, he needed to discover their strengths and eradicate their weaknesses.” The memory gave Kylo a rush of anger that was surprisingly fresh. He thought he’d given up on the Knights a long time ago. The Knights hadn’t been what he’d hoped, and the ugly truth was that Snoke was mostly to blame for that. Snoke hadn’t taken kindly to having his methods questioned, either. “Snoke kept testing them until they did fail,” he said bitterly.

“So they’re all dead?”

“No, the survivors are on Dagobah looking for Jedi artefacts.” Snoke had sent them there to find out whether Yoda had spent so many years there because he really enjoyed swamps, as most people assumed, or whether there was some more compelling reason.

“Were they loyal to him, or to you?”

“There’s a question,” said Kylo. He leaned back, eyes shut, hands behind his head, and stretched his feet against the console so they pushed the pilot's seat into a slow spin. “Snoke saw to it that nobody was on anybody’s side, exactly. But now Snoke’s dead. And we’re all Force users, and the galaxy hates us, so we have that in common.” The Knights were crazy or vicious and none of them proved to be good friends. But there was no denying what an impressive show they’d made when they worked together. Kylo flanked by his Knights, with their weird weapons and uncanny powers…they’d been terrifying. And Hux had always hated them.

Kylo snapped upright and planted his feet to stop his chair moving. “Plot a course for Dagobah.”

Niney reached her claws towards the navigation console, paused, then gave a long chittering explanation in binary. “I used to know this…” she finished lamely in Basic.

Kylo dumped her off the co-pilot’s seat and looked up the coordinates himself. “Can’t you even do the calculations…” he muttered. “We need to drop out of lightspeed, then re-calculate…” Niney slung out her grip cables hoisted herself up onto the pilot’s seat he’d just vacated. She tried to pull down the busbar that shut off the hyperdrive, but her arms were too short. Kylo turfed her off the seat and did it himself. The galaxy reappeared in a blaze of moveless light. They were right in the middle of a star cluster.

“I still don’t know what you’re planning…” began Niney, sounding hurt.

“Revenge. Saving Rey. Galactic conquest,” he said sarcastically. “Why else did you sign up? You can help by finding out what’s in the galley and bringing me some food while I re-set our course.”

“Just because people on Canto Bight mistook me for a servitor droid doesn’t mean…” began Niney, rolling off towards the galley. “I can do brain surgery now, you know.”

“I’d rather you _didn’t,”_ said Kylo, his fingers tuning the ship’s receptors so it could tell him where they were. “Can you fix a hyperdrive?”

“I still have most of the data chips for that,” said Niney, which was hardly encouraging.

 _“Most?_ ” said Kylo. “You’re just winding me up, aren’t you?” In fact the droid’s mordant wit had done a lot to pull Kylo out of his dark mood. Without her sarcasm and needling comments, he would have spent the whole journey sunk in a stew of anger and misery. As it was, his mother’s voice kept intruding at random moments; phrases she often used popped into his head as though he couldn’t think his own thoughts any more. Each time he’d feel helpless anger and shame. His betrayal of her was too big to deal with. It would swallow him up. He needed to focus on doing what he could to make it right.

He could never make it right, but saving Rey was a start.

Two meals later (“It’s called Feast in a Bag!” said Niney triumphantly. “Why does it look like it exploded, then?” Kylo asked) they were orbiting the damp and unpopular planet of Dagobah. Eons ago, all its mountain ranges had slumped into tired little hills that barely poked above the world-girdling swamps. Yoda had based himself in one of its hot and humid tropical swamps; Kylo’s brief study of the planet had told him the polar regions were also swampy, but in more of a cold and damp way. The Knights of Ren had been exploring somewhere in the temperate zone, where it rained a lot. From Kylo and Niney’s position in orbit, there was not much to see except a cloudy ball reflecting sunlight. Instead they looked at a globe holo-map of which floated in front of the _Pretty Thing’s_ viewscreen.

“Their last communications with Snoke said they’d found the remains of a temple complex,” said Niney.

Kylo worked the scanners, looking for anyone or anything broadcasting their presence. Dagobah was not empty - plenty of people came to seek enlightenment. They tended to avoid each other, and consequently there were no big settlements apart from a landing platform near where Yoda had lived. Niney had downloaded the Knights’ reports from the time they arrived on Dagobah. According to them, the spaceport was good for buying souvenirs or holocubes about Yoda, and not much else. They hadn’t stayed there.

“Let me look. I have the codes for their communications,” said Niney, and reached into the comms console with her slicing terminal. Kylo leaned back to let her work. A few minutes later he heard a voice he recognised. Desny Bartad, one of the Knights. He was saying something about a boat. “I’ll be round the lee side of the point in five minutes. I can tie up to one of those columns…” There was a crackle of static and then an exasperated voice, speaking away from the microphone, “What? No! Get your hand out of its mouth! No….no! That’s not cute at all! Don’t bring it in here!”

Kylo put his elbows on the scanner console and put his head in his hands, tugging at the roots of his hair where the beginnings of a headache were taking shape. “That sounds like them.”

“Some of the communications I intercepted with the Knights of Ren appeared to have little bearing on their mission,” said Niney blandly.

“They just need something to focus on,” Kylo muttered.

Niney pointed with a claw. “Their signal is coming from that peninsula there. Maybe that bay near the end?”

Kylo nodded and poked at his scanner controls. “I’m getting readings from the ground scanner. There are some structures there.” He grasped the ship’s sublight guidance systems and took the _Pretty Thing_ down through the wispy cloud layers. Soon they could see the planet’s surface, a patchwork of green jungle and silver-grey water. Niney locked in on the Knight’s comms signal and called out the coordinates for their course. There appeared to be nothing but trees and a wandering, muddled coastline, but at the last moment they caught sight of some architecture: a stumpy, stony ruin. There was a boat hauled up on the shore. A First Order shuttle was parked beside it, draped in anti-scanner netting but easily visible to the naked eye. Kylo set the _Pretty Thing_ down next to it.

“Surprise!” he muttered.

\- - -

Niney took one look at the surface of Dagobah and pulled her sensors shut with a snap. “Nope.”

“Come on!” said Kylo,

“I’ll mind the ship,” said Niney sulkily. She tested her supercharged zapper, making a sharp jolt of light. “Ready to repel all boarders.” Then she pushed herself aggressively deeper into the seat of the co-pilot’s chair and refused to speak in Basic again, though her derisive binary chatter made it pretty clear what she thought of the rain-lashed estuary outside. Soggy beds of reeds blended into muddy water; stubby fingers of stone stood up out of the nearby dunes. Beyond that, a low thick rainforest running back into low hills.

“Suit yourself,” snarled Kylo, and palmed the door release.

His tattered cloak was no match for the rain, and by the time he’d reached the crest of the dunes, water was running down the back of his neck and sending cold fingers down his spine. As he reached the top, he sank into a crouch between the stones so his body would not show a clear outline to any watchers. His Force senses confirmed that the land was not as empty as it looked; there were Force users nearby, and they were aware of him. Of course, they had seen the ship land. Kylo waited without moving.

On the other side of the dunes, the protruding stones were more obviously artificial; too regular and blocky to have got that way accidentally. Beyond the dunes they made a low façade facing up towards the hills, sketching out the front of a building that faced away from the sea. It was strangely unsettling. Maybe storms had worn away the seaward side. That strange other sight the Force sometimes gave him seemed to conjure it up: terraces and graceful stepped rooflines where there were only dunes now; diverse beings from every corner of the galaxy in Jedi robes, walking contemplatively or talking of deep matters, oblivious of the rain.

Such visions had plagued him since childhood. Snoke had always been eager to explain them, but they remained mysteries. Kylo shook his head, and the vision faded.

After a while, he made out a thready line of smoke rising above some buildings almost invisible in the greenery before him. Standing up, he plunged down the wet sand at the back of the dunes and strode up the rise towards the hidden building. As he went, he flexed his hands, and the Force came into them, almost crackling with eagerness to do his bidding.

The entrance to the building was a square of blackness a dozen paces within the eaves of the forest. If there had been grand pillars and fine doors once, the trees had torn them up and flung them down and sent vines to grow over them. There was just this dark hole in a mossy stone wall, and the unmistakable smell of human occupation: smoke and litter and trampled vegetation.

Kylo stood, legs braced, with the hilt of his lightsaber in his hand. Hidden eyes were watching him; they would see him in his ripped clothes all battered and worn, but standing tall and unafraid. He filled his lungs with the fresh wet air. “Come out!” he roared, and his voice boomed between the great trees and the stones. “Come out, I know you’re in there.”

A moment later there was movement inside the doorway. Two men came out into the light, tall and armoured. But their helmet visors were open to show their faces: Desny Bartad and Grole Hypink.

“Kylo Ren! My lord! We never expected to see you again!” said Desny, smiling. Grole opened his arms as though to embrace Kylo, though he wasn’t standing anywhere near enough to do so, and stopped before coming any closer. Both pairs of eyes dropped to Kylo’s saber hand, then looked up warily.

“Kneel,” said Kylo briefly, and his hand tightened on the hilt.

“We’ve forgotten our manners!” said Desny, pulling Grole down to kneel with him. “We’ve been here too long.”

“Too long,” echoed Grole, looking up at him. “Lord Ren.”

Kylo studied first one, then the other, keeping his face in the same expressionless glare as his mask had done. It wasn’t difficult; since the murder of his mother and the capture of Rey, the same dead flat rage was never far from the surface. “Where are the others?” he asked.

Desny pointed up towards a notch in the hills. “There’s a tunnel complex. They’re mapping it, securing anything valuable they come across. They’ve found enough to know it was an important place once.”

“When are they back?”

“Tomorrow,” said Desny. Grole froze for an instant, giving Desny a quick glance, then nodded vigorously.

“Tomorrow,” he agreed.

“Why were you two left behind here?”

“Somebody has to maintain the base camp. And we were trading. There’s a commune of mystics on the other side of the bay that sells us food.”

Kylo nodded without interest. The two men were still kneeling. They looked little better than Kylo himself. The weather had stained their elaborate mismatched armour; their shoulders were rounded and their faces hollowed by strain and boredom. Kylo gestured for them to rise, and hitched his lightsaber to his belt. Now finally they came together, grasping each other’s shoulders and exchanging not-too-hearty pats on the back before stepping away again.

“Come inside,” said Desny, and led the way in. “The proton-fuel heater broke down, but we have a fire.”

Kylo took his cloak off as he entered, snapping it to and fro to throw off a shower of drops. The others pulled off their helmets and outer armour. Their tunics and leggings looked faded and worn. He followed them up some shallow stairs to a small room with windows looking over the dunes and beyond them to where the _Pretty Thing_ and their First Order ship stood parked by the shore. There was some basic camp furniture and a firebox, source of the smoke he’d seen earlier. Kylo hung his cloak over a chair and sat down. “Snoke’s dead,” he said.

There was a beat of silence. “We heard,” said Desny at last. Grole fiddled around opening a packet of Wookiee Snacks.

“Who told you?” asked Kylo.

“The people we trade with. They saw it on the Holonet,” said Desny. Grole snapped a Wookiee Snack into three pieces and put them on a plasteel plate. He handed them round silently and sat down next to Desny.

“What were your last orders?” asked Kylo.

“Ah, just keep doing what we’re doing.” Desny looked warily at Grole. “General Hux seemed to be in charge.”

“I intend to change that,” said Kylo, and studied the men before him. They were tense, waiting for him to go on. “I’m the one who killed Snoke,” Kylo announced.

“Hah!” said Grole in a spray of crumbs. “I knew it! I said to them, to the others. It must have been you. You should be Supreme Leader. But you’d vanished. Hux wouldn’t tell us where you were!”

“He made an attempt on my life while I was sleeping. I was lucky to get out alive,” said Kylo, and fixed each of them with the full heat of his gaze. “Hux hates Force users. He has no place for them in his schemes. He’ll make sure you’re left here forever, sent on some wild bantha hunt to keep you out of the way. Sooner or later he’d arrange for some accident to happen to you, and then no more Knights of Ren.”

“See, I told you,” said Grole, elbowing Desny.

“But I have a better plan,” said Kylo. This was the moment. If he wanted to secure their loyalty, he had to play on their ambitions. “Snoke may be dead, but his vision was good. He planned for an empire with Force users at the top. Not the military, who want to run it like a prison camp. _We_ were meant to lead. Why else were we given the powers we have?”

Grole nodded, then surged clumsily to his feet. He made an extravagant bow like something from an old holodrama, and Desny followed suit. “Command us, Lord Ren.”

“Call the others,” said Kylo.

“There’s no way to reach them,” said Desny apologetically. “The tunnels that they’re in are full of old tech that we don’t understand. Something scrambles our comms.”

“Well, let’s go get them.”

“There’s nowhere to land our ships, and they have the skimmer,” said Desny, shame-faced. “It’d take hours to walk there, and it’s almost night already.”

“In the rain,” said Grole.

Kylo gave them both a disgusted look. Though it was hardly their fault. They’d been shoved off here with next to no resources.

Something heavy shuffled up to the foot of the stairs below and made a moaning grumble.

“That’s just Slow,” said Grole. “She probably heard me open the packet.” He shook out another Wookiee Snack, broke off a piece and threw it down the stairs. There was the sound of a substantial set of jaws snapping shut.

Kylo imagined descending on the Finalizer with a rag tag army of worn-out Knights and their pet whatever-it-was. Maybe it could eat Hux. But from the look of things, the Knights badly needed a tune-up. He’d make them train like they’d never trained before, all the way to wherever the Finalizer was.

“Well,” Desny said. “Let’s talk. How are we going to do this?” He reached over for a pack of cards on the table, and they played low-stakes sabacc while making plans. Kylo didn’t mention Rey; as far as the Knights knew, their mission was to take out Hux and the top officers on the Finalizer. “The troops will follow us once Hux is gone. They did not question it when I commanded them on Crait,” said Kylo.

As night fell, Kylo stood up to go. The close quarters and forced inaction were unbearable in this company. Desny was stolid and close-mouthed; only in the presence of violence did he light up. Grole was more of a nervous character; an excellent fighter once he committed himself, but he second-guessed himself constantly. He did nothing without checking for Desny or Kylo’s lead. Kylo was in danger of snapping at him, for no good reason.

“I’m going to sleep on the ship. See you in the morning,” Kylo said.

Desny raised his fist to his temple in the Knights’ informal salute. “Until tomorrow. The others will be glad to see you. Time we showed Hux what power really looks like.”

Grole accompanied him down the stairs. A spiny lizard creature, twice the size of a human, sprawled across the entire landing.

“Giant frill-necked sleen,” said Grole, his voice pitched somewhere between pride and apology. “She keeps watch.” He shoved it out of the way with his boot and it moved to one side, grumbling. Kylo was in no mood to ask further about it. Grole seemed liable to tell him in far more detail than he wanted to hear.

Back on the _Pretty Thing,_ Niney greeted him with a long screech of alarm from her station beside the comms panel. She had one of her slicing arms engaged with the relays. She switched to Basic. “We’ve got to go. The moment they recognised you, they made a coded call to Relay Station Zellex, routed through to the _Finalizer._ There’s a First Order cruiser on its way here with twenty troop shuttles and orders to capture you. They’ll be here tomorrow.”

It was as though the air in the cabin had turned solid. Kylo had to smash his fist against the bulkhead to break himself out of a rage so sudden and overwhelming that it nearly paralysed him. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he spat.

“I only just decoded it. Listen, they’re talking again!” There was a burst of high pitched noise from the comms scanner. Niney went still, her lights flashing rapidly as she processed the data streaming out of the Knights’ base camp.

“Now they’re talking to the rest of the Knights. They’re en route to somewhere else…they’re on a First Order ship, that’s all I can make out.”

“So they had a second ship,” said Kylo slowly. The shuttle parked outside had fooled him. “Those two in there said the rest of the Knights were _here_ , exploring some underground complex in the hills,” said Kylo. “Those liars!”

“That was a ploy to get you to wait until the troops could get here.”

“When are they due, do you know?”

“Three standard hours, at least,” said Niney.

“Wait here. I’m going to find out what’s really going on.” Kylo bounded out of the _Pretty Thing_ and loped back to the Knights’ redoubt. The Force boosted his senses and his movements so that even in the dark, he was sure-footed in the sand and among the fallen trees at the margins of the forest. There was one light on in the building; Kylo drew the Force to him and ran in, lightsaber in hand but unlighted. He almost ignited it when he saw Slow, Grole’s reptile pet, still asleep at the bottom of the stairwell. Light leaking down from above showed her as a black mass of wet-looking skin and scales. But Slow merely raised her head at his approach and half erected some spines in a minimal show of aggression. If Grole was going to choose a pet, of course it would have to be a useless one. Kylo vaulted over it.

“I thought I heard something.” Desny’s voice came down the stairs.

“It’s just Slow,” said Grole. “She’d warn us if Kylo was coming back. I could tell she didn’t like him.”

“You _wish!”_ shouted Kylo, bursting into the room. “It’s _me,_ you traitors!”

Desny’s hand was already on his weapon, the barrel swinging up towards Kylo, a hot blaze spitting out of it. Kylo didn’t even think. His hand was up and the blast was halted in mid-air long enough for him to dodge under it, lightsaber ignited and humming with raw red power. Desny met it with a second weapon, an electroblade that he unhitched one-handed from his belt with supernatural speed - he must have been sitting here fully armed, half suspecting Kylo would discover his treachery. Kylo let go his Force-hold on the first weapon’s beam so it hit the opposite wall in a shower of masonry, unbalancing Grole, who’d hesitated exactly as Kylo had known he would. Before Desny could finish deploying his electroblade, Kylo’s lightsaber had swept up in a fast backhand arc that severed Desny’s arm at the shoulder and sent the weapon spinning up to the ceiling. Kylo’s return stroke connected with Desny’s neck. The headless body slumped into him as he charged past; Kylo seized it and hoisted it up to deflect both the electroblade as it fell back down, and Grole’s first shot.

Kylo bounced feet-first off the wall and leapt onto Grole, casting aside every technique he’d ever learned. The man flailed away from him, clumsy with terror, and the Force roared around Kylo as though it would reduce Grole to his component atoms. The fury in him had been denied for too long; he just wanted feel Grole’s face turn to pulp under his fists. It only took a couple of careless swipes with his blade and Grole was weaponless. He backed away, around and around the room, but Kylo pursued him, smashing his fists into Grole’s face until he fell to the ground, hands up to shield his head. Kylo stood with his boot on Grole’s throat.

“Where are the others?” roared Kylo. “They’re in space, aren’t they? Where are they going?”

“Hux had a mission for them.”

“What mission?” said Kylo, kicking Grole’s hands away from his face. “I’m going to grind your head into the floor if you don’t tell me!”

“It’s not true what you said, that he didn’t want Force users. He wants us as his elite guards. His shock troops. We were just left here, me and Desny, to catch you if you came.”

Kylo gave him a humourless smile. “Hux underestimates me. Where are they?” He ignited his lightsaber once again, and Grole’s eyes widened in fear.

“Joining Hux on the Finalizer. Near Serillon Station.”

Kylo reached out his free hand, drawing the Force to probe Grole’s mind. Something in there was turning, squirming, hiding from the unwelcome light of Kylo’s regard. “But there’s something else. Tell me!” He lowered the lightsaber to almost brush Grole’s cheek.

Grole screwed his eyes shut, teeth clenched. He shook his head.

“What did Hux promise you?” Kylo roared. “Why’d you think you’d do better under him?”

“You were gone,” said Grole, his voice thin with fear. “I would have waited for you, but the others…”

“Why? Why throw your lot in with Hux? Did you really think he was worth your loyalty?”

“He’s found some girl, a girl with the Force. You know how Snoke used to say a girl would come, she was in the future…”

“I know the one,” said Kylo. His heart contracted into a cold stone. “Go on…”

“She’s strong. Hux wants to use her, like the Resistance was using her, like a sort of figurehead. But it’s no use to break her under torture. He wants her to be one of us. If we can turn her, he said we could have her.”

“‘Have her’,” said Kylo, his voice dangerously low.

Grole hadn’t lost his horror of making social blunders. He struggled, desperate not to speak, but then broke, his words coming out in a rush. “Yes! Yes, everything you’re thinking. She’s beautiful. That dog, Mordrek, he wanted her. _I_ would have waited for you, _I_ would have followed you, Lord Ren, but he — he only wanted to be ruled by his cock. He said he’d make her beg, by the time he was finished with her, she’d be on her knees begging for his…”

Kylo put the lightsaber through Grole’s mouth before he could finish.

“I don’t need to hear that,” he said quietly to the room. The place smelled of blood and burned flesh, and it sickened him as much as it had since he first smelled it, early in his bondage to Snoke. A wave of cold washed over him; the heated sweat of anger cooling suddenly to join with the miserable chill of his rain-soaked clothes.

He jogged back to the _Pretty Thing._ He had to step over the snoring Slow on his way out.

“Serillon Station?” asked Niney as soon as he walked into the cockpit.

“Yes.”

“Good. I worked out how to call up the coordinates from before,” she said proudly. “It should be all plotted in.”

Kylo dropped into the pilot’s seat and fired up the engines. He looked over Niney’s calculations as the drives screamed their way up to readiness. They seemed correct. With profound relief, he boosted the toggles to engage the engines, and the ship pulled eagerly away from Dagobah’s gravity.

 

* * * *


	22. Visiting Hours on the Finalizer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phasma's not the only one to visit Rey in her cell on board the Finalizer.
> 
> \- - - - -

What woke Rey the next morning wasn’t the clatter of her food bowls being pushed through the door slot, or the metallic footsteps of the changing guard outside. She sat up, and pain flared in her ribs. She rubbed them gently and, without being too obvious about it, tried to catch sight of the thing that had startled her awake. There was no place anyone could hide, yet she was certain there was another person in the room. She had felt this harsh, bitter presence before, too. And since she could feel him now, perhaps her connection to the Force was returning too.

“Anakin Skywalker,” she said quietly. Maybe some spiralling dust motes caught the light in the corner of the room below the air vent, but when she looked directly, there was nothing to see.

She could hear him, though, inside her head.

 _Ben’s the only one I’ve got left,_ said the heavy voice. _My son is dead and my daughter too, within weeks of each other._

The invisible presence filled the room with anger and misery. Rey smiled sadly. “Leia wouldn’t admit it, but Ben was right. He takes after you,” she said.

 _She told you how he worships me, did she? But he doesn’t **see** me,_ hissed the ghost. _He’s so set on the person he thinks I was._

“Can’t you Force ghosts visit each other?” said Rey. “I mean, you could go see Luke and Leia. Leia didn’t believe Luke was really gone, and you’re still around.”

Nothing but bitterness from Anakin’s ghost. _I did it all wrong. I don’t get a another go at being their father. Death isn’t a second chance. Don’t believe anyone who tells you that._

“I didn’t,” said Rey. So many dry bones on Jakku, and they’d never inspired her with much hope of an afterlife. “Why are you _here,_ though?”

_It’s as the Force wills. I’d rather be somewhere else._

“Well, thanks,” said Rey. She leaned back against the wall and let the prickly silence drag on until it became too much even for her. “I’m imprisoned, Anakin, and they’re torturing me. And you want my shoulder to cry on? _Help_ me!”

A brush of the Force. Even with her senses so dimmed by the First Orders drugs, it made her nerve endings dance as though a powerful hand had drawn steel and sandpaper across them. Strangely familiar, that roughness and potency. Kylo was more like him than he’d ever know.

_I know this, what they’re doing to you. Ysalamiri. Creatures immune to the Force. People have tried to capture their essence for a long time, and it seems they’ve succeeded._

“Ben managed to block it somehow,” Rey said.

 _He’s still trying,_ said Anakin. _But this drug is strong. He only reached you because you vomited out most of it when they first tried it at Leia’s rally._

“He’s still trying,” Rey echoed faintly, and her heart thumped hard, twice. _There’s hope!_ “Can you do the same?” she asked.

 _I was powerful onc_ e, said Anakin’s ghost. _Will you tell Ben something, if you meet him again?_ he asked.

Rey nodded.

_Tell him to finish what I started._

“Finish what you started…” Rey repeated. “What did you start?”

A grim laugh. _I suppose if I'd really done more than start, you’d know the answer to that. And so would he._

“Well I _don’t_ know!” said Rey, suddenly tired of this circular talk leading nowhere. “Are you going to help me or not?”

 _Yes!_ The ghost gave a humourless laugh. _It would be my pleasure to destroy these stupid upstarts. They have no idea what the Empire was meant to be. I’ll help you._ He laid an invisible hand for an instant against Rey’s forehead. Nothing happened. _Yoda would have done this better,_ he snarled after a moment. _He always loved that oneness-with-the-universe crap._

“Why doesn’t he…?” started Rey.

_Apparently the Force doesn’t will it. And Yoda can’t see you the way I can. So this is something I have to do._

Again, that phantom touch came. This time it sent a current of power through her, and her spine straightened in response.

 _But remember. Tell Ben_ , the ghost said.

“Tell him what?” said Rey, exasperated. “Can’t Force ghosts say anything straight out?”

 _Free the slaves!_ he said, and for a moment he was wholly visible, a startling sight in the barren cell: A tall man, handsome in a tragic way, with thick tousled hair and a firm jaw. His eyes were arresting under strong brows, heavy with years of anger. _I swore I would do it. There will never be justice in the galaxy without it. I started, but all the good I did vanished like a vapour trail in a windy sky. Nobody remembers it. Nobody will, unless you tell them._

“I’ll tell him,” said Rey. Her heart was pounding suddenly. _Free the slaves!_ She imagined a wind sweeping through Niima Outpost and everywhere like it, leaving Unkar Plutt's stronghold in ruins and his enforcers fleeing to the far horizons, their weapons thrown down for the sand to bury.

 _Good,_ said Anakin. He laid his hand on her head again and stood up. A charge of energy seemed to flow from him to her, even as he faded away. _I won’t be far away,_ he said.

Rey stood up and paced around the cell, and all her bruises and injuries felt smaller. The Force! With Anakin’s help, she’d connected to it again. She could only hope that when the time came - and surely it would - he would help her. “Stay with me,” she said softly.

\- - -

After the medical droid had paid its daily visit, Rey sank into the deepest trance of meditation she could manage, willing the Force to come to her. And it did, in a brush of connection to the life around her: the guards outside the room, people in corridors below and overhead. Still nothing she could grasp hold of, but Anakin’s power was working to keep her connection to the Force open despite the drug.

 _Ben!_ she called. If she could reach him, maybe he could help Anakin lift the barrier cutting her access to the Force. And for a moment she felt him. Dim and muffled, but somewhere she was certain he was trying his hardest, hurling himself against the barriers between them. _Ben! You’re my only hope._

 _Rey! I know you’re there!_ But they were both lost, blundering in a mist that separated them. Her night fantasies of him were more solid than this.

There were no more interrogations. The last few times had been little more than a routine, anyway, boring for both participants. Now instead, Rey was dragged into a huge hangar space and forced to stand in front of a stormtrooper parade. Hux stood beside her on a podium and made a speech about the final dissolution of the ancient Jedi religion. He told them the Resistance’s guiding star was extinguished and the last Jedi practitioner, Rey, now stood before them. She was eager to learn how she might lend her small powers to further the First Order’s aims, he said. Hux used a lot of words like “acquiescent” and “magnanimous”. Rey had a new respect for stormtrooper education, if they could understand half of what he said.

Somewhere there must be a camera; surely this scene would go out across the galaxy on the Holonet. Finn and the Resistance would see her standing in this sea of enemies, “acquiescent,” as Hux said. Rey’s throat was clamped tight over the words she wanted to scream. _This is not me, I hate this place and these people and everything they stand for!_ But she kept her face blank through Hux’s lies and the small black eyes of a thousand blaster muzzles reminded her why she must keep silent. Rey stood as straight as she could. _I am not afraid._ That was the face she must show to the cameras, and if her friends were truly her friends, they would know what was in her heart, and it was anything but acquiescence.

After that Rey was left alone. Her reeducation seemed to be postponed. Her captors were careful to give her a daily dose of their Force-suppressing drug, and Rey was careful to show no sign that it was losing its effectiveness.

 _Ben!_ In the early hours of another morning, before her cell’s lighting came on fully, her dreams were disturbed by his signature in the Force. It was all darkness and fury. He was in a rage, fighting. _Taste my revenge!_ She couldn’t see his enemies, but knew that they fell, snuffed out like candles.

 _Ben!_ she called again, despairingly. What was this violence she could sense? Was he turning to the dark? Was he losing himself to pride and cruelty again? She called on Anakin’s ghost, but if he heard her, even his powers couldn’t bridge the gap.

Later that day the door opened and Phasma came in. For a moment Rey was overwhelmed by her presence; a huge metal woman who overcrowded the room simply by entering it. The cold lights of the cell glinted off her armour in a thousand sharp points.

But Rey forgot all that when she saw the silver object the woman was flipping casually from one metal-gauntleted hand to the other.

 _Anakin,_ Rey breathed silently into the Force, or the space inside her where the Force should be.

 _I see it. Now, that makes me angry,_ said the ghost, suddenly beside her.

“So this is one of these fabled lightsabers,” said Phasma. Her metal thumb found the button, ignited it. Immediately the dull little cell was filled with blue light. The weapon hummed and spat. Phasma’s helmet inclined as she watched the blade in her hand. The shattered kyber crystal made it waver slightly, giving the barren room an underwater look. “A pretty toy,” she said, and swung the blade around a few times with the practiced efficiency of a trained fighter. Rey steeled herself not to flinch as the tip swept past her. Phasma thumbed it off and stood staring at Rey. “Pretty,” she said again, and in her hands it did look like nothing more than a toy. A metal accessory for a metal woman.

“So, was it _this_ he was interested in? Or was it _you?”_ Phasma asked, and the blank eyeholes of her helmet seemed to sweep over Rey’s face and body. “You’re pretty, I suppose.” Phasma’s voice made the word brittle and contemptible. “Lots of girls are pretty.” She snorted, a metallic whistle behind her mask. “Many of our officers are prettier, though. They’re in peak physical condition. Our training toughens them mentally, too. If Lord Ren was looking for some kind of…” She paused, as though the word she wanted was not one she could say. “…Some kind of… _ally_ …then I can’t see why it would be you.”

“I, um, like I told the Inquisitor, Ky, er, Ren was told some prophecy about a girl.”

Phasma stalked around Rey, looking down at her. “He had a very personal interest in you. It interfered with his focus.” Shoulders back, elbows out, Phasma made herself look even bigger. “I know him,” she said, leaning close to search Rey’s face. “Better than you. Better than you could _ever_ know him.” Her voice had roughened, and Rey didn’t need the Force’s help to read the emotion behind the mask. _Jealousy._

 _How dare you!_  Rey and Kylo had shared more than Phasma could imagine. They’d been inside each other’s minds; surely he became Ben for nobody else but Rey. In Snoke’s throne room, he’d risked everything for her. Maybe even now, he was fighting for her. Taking revenge.

Phasma must have seen the anger in Rey’s eyes. She gave a little snort, light and amused. Rey’s confidence was shaken. She could imagine Phasma smiling coolly behind her mask, a smile that said maybe Rey’s bond with Kylo was not so special after all. Phasma must have shared meals with him, accompanied him on missions, led troops into battle beside him. Afterwards, they’d probably had drinks together to debrief, and talked far into the night...

“He’s ambitious. Looking for power,” Phasma went on. She planted a hand square in Rey’s chest and gave her a push, making her stagger. “You’re weak. Hardly a suitable match for a would-be Emperor.”

“What?…when did he tell you…Emperor?” Rey gulped. She’d thought Kylo’s offer in Snoke’s throne room had been a spur-of-the-moment thing. Desperate, ill-considered. Not part of some long-held ambition.

“It doesn’t matter. I know him. And I know all he needed was the right support. The right ally.” Phasma drew herself up and for a moment her thoughts were crystal-clear. _How fine we would look, our Supreme Leader in sable and I beside him in silver. They would call me his Silver Queen._

Rey nodded, feeling sickened. Had Kylo always planned to seize power? Perhaps Rey had never been more than a means to an end. 

“And you had _this!”_ Phasma ignited the lightsaber again and swept it over Rey’s head, so close that a few stray hairs crackled into smoke. “An ignorant little girl with a bit of Force talent, and this lightsaber.” Again, Phasma’s thoughts were clear to her. The ruler and his consort, tall and proud, each holding a lightsaber. They looked so right together.

“He wanted it,” said Rey, trying to turn the conversation away from herself. “He needed the lightsaber.”

“They say only a Jedi can wield a lightsaber,” Phasma said, striking a pose: legs braced far apart, arms up high. The tip of the lightsaber scored a burn in the ceiling.

“It’s the, ah, traditional weapon of a Jedi,” said Rey cautiously. “Or a Sith. A Force user.” There had to be a way to turn this situation around. Phasma’s jealousy was the lever, if she could only see how to use it.

“And yet I just used it. How is that?” And there was something in the woman’s voice, even through the muffling helmet, that gave Rey the first spark of an idea. That hunger. A hunger Rey intended to feed.

“It’s a mistake,” said Rey. “People think it’s only Jedi that can use them, but that’s because all the stories are about Force users and their lightsaber battles.”

“So anyone can use them,” said the woman smugly. She ignited the blade again and swung it casually a few times, finishing with a slow travel of the tip across the floor of the cell. It left a smoking black line in the decking. The woman regarded it intently for a moment then switched off the blade again. “Nice,” she said. “It takes a lot to mark durasteel.” She took a step towards Rey, who straightened hurriedly. The sheer size of the woman was alarming. “Yet I don’t see the practicality of it.”

“It takes training,” said Rey, putting a note of hurt pride into her voice.

“All our stormtroopers have training in bladed combat. As do I.” The blade was alight again, and hovering an inch from Rey’s throat.

Rey jumped back, stumbling a little as though more afraid than she actually was. “It’s not what you do with the lightsaber. It’s what it does for you,” she said hastily.

The blank helmet cocked, curious now. “Oh? I hear you trained under Luke Skywalker. The Last Jedi.”

“I was the last to train with him,” said Rey carefully. It did not feel safe to lie directly to the gleaming metal figure in front of her. She dropped her shoulders, looked forlornly around the small room. Signalling a vulnerability she did not in fact feel.

“And what did you learn from the Last Jedi?” said the woman. Her voice sounded skeptical. Yet her stiff figure still somehow betrayed curiosity.

Rey suddenly remembered her first lesson with Luke. _How wrong I was about the Force_. Would this woman know any more that Rey had? 

“I couldn’t show you here,” said Rey mulishly. Dangling the possibility that, with the right bait, she might show Phasma something. She had to make it look as though she was reluctant, was only offering because she wanted something in return. Something Phasma was in a position to give. What mattered most was keeping her around, her and the lightsaber. 

“And what could you show me?” the woman asked contemptuously, igniting the lightsaber once more. This time she flowed through the steps of some training kata. Every movement was a miracle of restrained power and control. Again, her deadly dance ended with the point of the lightsaber near Rey’s throat. “You. A mere beginner, as I understand it.”

Rey allowed her fear to show. The lightsaber was genuinely terrifying now; the crystal unstable, making the blade spit blue fire. Flecks of heat pricked her skin. Rey let the moment stretch as long as she could, praying the Force would not lead her astray in her guesses. She let tears come to her eyes and looked up at the pitiless metal mask above her. At last when she could stretch it out no longer, she let the woman see her crumple in apparent despair. “Don’t!” she pleaded. It didn’t take much pretence to give in to tears. “Don’t hurt me!”

“I will, unless you tell me everything.”

Rey said haltingly, “It has a crystal inside with…certain properties.”

“Magic,” said the woman scornfully. But that note of hunger was still there.

“No, not magic at all!” said Rey. “It’s just... not well understood.” She looked down, breathing in shallow nervous pants, sure the woman would prompt her for more. The humming blade hovered by her throat.

“Don’t hold back,” the woman said. “I said _everything._ If you don’t tell me now, the Interrogator will have it out of you later today. He is less likely to reward your honesty.”

Rey squirmed away as much as she could before answering. Let the woman think she was afraid. “The old masters probably didn’t want people to know…” she began.

“Know what?” said the masked woman eagerly.

“The…whatever it is in the lightsaber, the crystal inside it….gives its power to the user. With proper training.” Rey held her breath. She could only hope Phasma was as ignorant about the Force as Rey had been.

The blade went out. The armoured woman stood, cold satisfaction radiating from every line of her shining body. “So Force users are made, not born,” she said.

Rey hung her head as though defeated. “Yes,” she whispered.

“You will train me in the ways of the Force,” Phasma demanded. “And if I am pleased with you,” she looked around the cell, “I can arrange for you to move to better quarters.” The woman paused, and added, “You’ll still be just as heavily guarded, so don’t get any ideas.”

\- - - -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- - - -
> 
> Some people find it confusing why I write "Ben" sometimes and "Kylo" other times. The best way I can explain it is that he's Ben to Rey and other members of his family when they address him directly, or imagine him within their personal relationship with him; he's Kylo when they think about his actions, his external self, or the roles he's assumed.


	23. Phasma and the Lightsaber

The next day stormtroopers came to Rey’s cell. “You are to join Captain Phasma in the training room,” said one. They formed up around her, weapons cocked, and escorted her to a large room with a padded floor. Weapons racks lined two of the walls; they were empty. There was only Phasma, and she had shed her metal armour for a sleeveless tunic and pants.

Rey had never seen anyone like her. So tall, and every inch of her corded with muscle. The skin on her arms and shoulders was marked with scars and wide patches of unnaturally smooth bacta-healed skin; by Finn’s account, Phasma must have been heavily burned when he threw her into the flaming wreckage of the _Supremacy_. Her chilly voice was matched by a face equally cold, with pale blue eyes and hard-planed features. One half was unnaturally white and tight with tank-grown skin. She greeted Rey with a civility that barely concealed the poison beneath.

“So. Come in here to the centre. Let’s see what you have to show me.”

There was a staff on the ground in front of her. Phasma nodded to it. Rey bent down to pick it up, never taking her eyes off Phasma. Rightly so; before she had straightened up, Phasma attacked her with a staff of her own. For long minutes, Rey slashed and struck and panted with effort, beaten back time and again, fighting through the gluey slowness she was left with now she couldn’t access the Force. Phasma was so much stronger, and Rey’s street brawl tactics were no match for her training. Soon Rey found herself on the floor with the point of the staff at her throat.

Phasma broke off with a grunt of satisfaction. “You’re cunning, but you have no technique. I would have expected better.”

“It’s not what we do. The Jedi. Not what I learned,” Rey panted. “It’s the lightsaber. You know I defeated Kylo Ren with it.”

Phasma unhooked the lightsaber from her belt and studied it for a moment. “Yes….” She ignited it. A second later she was whirling and striking around Rey, never quite touching her. Rey lay still, tensed to fling herself out of reach. Though she was horribly aware that if Phasma wanted to finish her, there wasn’t much Rey could do about it. But from the way Phasma kept glancing at her own reflection in the mirrors, this activity was all for display. She was clearly pleased with the figure she made.

“No, not like that,” said Rey. “That stuff is all for show.”

Phasma stormed over, making a series of short stabbing swings, and stopped in a position to stab Rey. “This would be so easy,” she said coldly.

Rey backed away and rolled to her feet without breaking eye contact. “That’s not what it’s for,” she said, and repeated what she’d done when Luke tried to train her. She shut her eyes and reached out, staff in hand, as though feeling for something in the air with its tip. "You focus. Inside. You breathe. You search for the heart of the weapon. You let it come into you so it makes your senses brighter, your muscles faster…”

Phasma gave a short laugh. “As though I’d make myself that vulnerable!” Then she walked over to a bag lying by the empty weapons racks and pulled out a pair of manacles. “Come here!” she said imperiously. Rey was forced to walk over and have her wrists locked to the rack. Phasma moved out of her reach. “Now, tell me again!”

“You have to breathe so your mind and spirit are harnessed together, and then you have to find the heart of the weapon with your senses,” said Rey, closing her eyes to demonstrate.

“But what does that _mean?”_ said Phasma, frustration evident in her voice. Rey realised - or her slowly-reviving Force senses told her - that Phasma must have been studying the lightsaber for weeks.

“At the beginning, it feels like nothing is happening. It’s gradual. You have to be patient. Breathe with me now,” said Rey. Phasma stood in front of her, well out of reach, and Rey guided her through the first steps of meditation. She poured every ounce of persuasion into her voice. She had no way to touch Phasma to make her think the Force was connecting with her, as Luke had done with Rey. She just had to play on her suggestibility. Luckily in such a situation, eyes closed and breathing great draughts of oxygen as Rey instructed, it was easy to make Phasma imagine all kinds of effects.

“Maybe your fingers will start to tingle where they touch the hilt,” suggested Rey. Breathing that deeply, it was almost a given that Phasma’s hands would start to tingle. “Try to visualise it as a light, as warmth, travelling up your arms towards your heart.”

Phasma’s face lost its hard-bitten tension and she became almost beautiful as Rey lulled her into a meditative state. Yet, though the Force was not touching Phasma, it was certainly returning to Rey, and she could sense what kind of person Phasma was. The meditation was centring Phasma, as it would any person, and filling her with as much calm and contentment as her spirit would allow. But it changed nothing essential about her: Phasma’s every breath only expanded her monstrous self-interest and desire for power.

After an hour, Rey told her that was enough for a first session.

Phasma didn’t reply, but she looked pleased. Clearly she believed she’d achieved something. She came over to Rey and unlocked her from the metal railing. “We’ll do this again tomorrow,” she said.

“If I could access the Force, I’d have a better idea how you were progressing,” Rey hinted.

Phasma gave her a contemptuous look. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she said, and called in a squad of stormtroopers to lead Rey back to her cell.

The next morning, as Rey woke, the deadening walls of the Force-blocking drug gave way with a soggy snap. She sat up, looking round groggily, certain that once again the cell was not as empty as it seemed.

 _Ta-dah!_ Anakin’s shade was briefly visible, bowing ironically like a magician who’d successfully pulled off a complicated trick. But his smile was tired; his face wavered between the handsome youth she’d seen before and an older man, pallid and ill-looking. _This is all I can do right now._

She stood up to thank him, but Anakin was gone.

But her connection to the Force had not. Rey took a deep breath and reached for the bond between her and Kylo. A moment later, her view of the cell was overlaid with the controls of a spaceship, not one she recognised. They faded away, leaving only Kylo floating like a ghost mid-air in her cell. He was staring at her with a look of amazement.

“Rey!” he said.

“Ben!” Without even thinking, she jumped off her bunk and took two short steps to do…what? She stopped. There was something about him that frightened her. The afterburn of violence. Her sudden movement was too much; the Force shattered around her like thin ice, and his image was gone. But she could hear him, sense him! _Ben, don’t go!_

 _Where are you?_ His voice in her head was savage, urgent.

 _On a First Order ship. I don’t know which one. Hux is on it, and Phasma too. They’re still drugging me so I can’t use the Force. But it’s losing its effect_. As she said that, she felt Anakin’s presence again, amused and somehow approving. She’d guessed he wasn’t ready to reveal himself to his grandson. Apparently she was right.

 _I could help you. Like I did when_ — Kylo’s thoughts went dark, and for an instant they were both pulled back to the rally on Warlentta, and Leia’s death. Leia had been a different person for each of them, but both of them felt the same wrenching of the heart.

Kylo was the first to recover. _I couldn’t sense you before, but now I can. It’s like there’s a gate that’s opened between us. I can keep the Force around you._

 _Oh!_ But she couldn’t say anything more. She found herself crying. Even though Anakin had told her Kylo was looking for her, it had still seemed like no more than a wild hope. She’d spent so much of her life hoping, and it had never come to anything.

 _What is it?_ His voice was low and husky. He sounded concerned. This was Ben, it _had_ to be Ben, coming to rescue her. Not Kylo, chasing after her with fresh blood on his hands.

Rey pushed that aside for now. Her hold on the Force was still shaky; Anakin’s help might not be enough. _Listen, I need you to do something for me. Phasma has the lightsaber. She’s trying to learn how to use it. I’m supposed to be teaching her. She takes me out of this cell block to do it, and there’s only me and her in the training room, but she gives me a training staff. If you could make sure I stay connected with the Force I could…_

 _They’ll pay for what they’ve done,_ he said immediately.

A few minutes later the medical droid came to give her the daily dose of Force-suppressant. But afterwards, Rey could still feel Kylo’s anger like a bright seed under her heart.

Then it was time for Phasma’s lesson. _Stay with me_ , said Rey silently. Kylo didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to: she felt his determination keeping pace with hers as she was escorted to the training room. A grim, watchful presence. Her secret knight.

Again, Rey was manacled to the empty weapons rack so Phasma could shut her eyes and centre herself in meditation without fear of attack. Rey guided her through some breathing exercises. Even the woman’s breathing was terrifying; her lungs were like engines, built to power a killing machine. Rey dragged her gaze away from Phasma’s sinewy, murderous-looking hands and looked instead at the lightsaber clipped to her belt.

 _Can you see this?_ she asked Kylo.

_Not really. I can just sense you._

Rey sighed. _Okay. Give me what you can._ Raising her voice, she instructed Phasma to take the lightsaber and hold it in front of her, cupping the hilt in both hands. “Don’t switch it on. I want you to feel the power inside it. Make it respond to you.” Phasma did as Rey asked. Rey waited until Phasma’s face was contracted with the effort of making a connection she would never make. Then, hardly daring to breathe, she reached out herself for the Force. It was there! A live wire with just a trickle of energy. Rey started to breathe deeply in tandem with Phasma, at the same time urging the hilt of the lightsaber to move. Just a little twitch. Phasma’s eyes flew open.

“Did you feel something? Did it move?” asked Rey.

“Yes,” said Phasma shortly.

“Relax. Try again. See if you can feel its power moving into you,” said Rey soothingly.

 _She’ll hate being your student,_ said Kylo’s voice in her head. _Knowing there’s anything anyone can do better than her just kills her._

 _She is hoping to impress you with her Force powers when you meet again_ , said Rey.

Kylo’s laugh was dark and ugly, making Phasma’s ambitions seem so contemptible that Rey felt hope reviving in her, and with it, strength. She reached out with the Force again and made the lightsaber tremble in Phasma’s hands. Phasma gave a sharp intake of breath in response.

“Good,” said Rey out loud. “Now you’re going to hold it at arms’ length, one hand only, and bring it across your body very slowly. Sweep your arm across…no, stretch it out sideways and down, then bring it up and inwards until it’s touching your chest. Right side, then left.”

“Why am I doing this?” said Phasma.

“I was told it creates a space around you for the connection to exist. Like drawing an outline,” said Rey. “Or setting limits.”

“Why would I want to set limits on it?,” asked Phasma sharply. “What if I want the Force to extend all over the ship?”

“It will confuse the kyber crystal. Too many other lives confuse it,” Rey improvised quickly. In the back of her head, Kylo snorted. Concealing a smile, Rey reached out again with the Force, testing how strongly she could affect the lightsaber in Phasma’s hands. It felt like a weight on the end of her own arm. Rey made it swoop gently through the air, tugging Phasma through the moves she’d suggested to her. To Phasma, it must feel as though the lightsaber was coming to life and working with her.

“Centre it against your heart at the end of each move,” said Rey. At the other end of their Force bond, Kylo tensed, understanding what she was about to do. He’d taught it to her, after all.

Phasma completed an arm circle and stood, eyes closed, rapt and triumphant, convinced the lightsaber was coming to life under her control.

“Against your heart,” prompted Rey. “Feel it.”

Kylo gave a humourless laugh, and the Force around Rey flexed and changed, becoming dark and filled with hidden lightning. This was the dark side, she realised, making her fearless. Everything was going to be easy now. Even murder.

“Other hand. Wide sweep, out and in. Feel the lightsaber touch your core,” said Rey, keeping her breaths even, her voice calm. She could visualise the circuit that ignited the lightsaber perfectly well. The button was designed to be stiff so one could not carelessly turn it on by mistake.

Phasma paused, the hilt held to her heart, eyes closed and smiling as she filled her lungs with life-giving breath.

 _At least she’ll die happy_. Rey reached out with the Force to ignite the lightsaber.

Immediately her connection to the Force skittered away. Somewhere in the world of ghosts, Anakin was swearing. The connection he’d opened had slid shut, and the First Order’s drugs were deadening Rey’s senses. She could barely feel the Force at all. Kylo faded to a dim voice in the distance. Rey tried again to reach the lightsaber on her own, teeth bared in a snarl as she tried to ignite it.

“What’s wrong?” Phasma’s voice was sharp. Rey lifted her head. Phasma had opened her eyes and was staring at her suspiciously. “Why are you all tensed up?”

 _Lie!_ said Anakin in her ear. _Quick, anything!_

Inspiration struck. “It’s just so hard to give it up,” said Rey, and let her frustration show as misery. Stars, she’d been so close! It wasn’t difficult to call up some tears. “The bond with the lightsaber is….well, it hurts to watch it go to someone else.”

“You poor child, you really didn’t bargain for any of this, did you?” asked Phasma. “Look what you’ve gotten yourself mixed up in. You didn’t even want the power, did you?” She smiled, but the sympathy in her voice was thinner than flimsiplast.

“No,” whispered Rey, letting a tear drip down her chin.

Phasma looked down at the lightsaber in her hand, gloating. “I think I can make better use of this than you.” She closed her eyes and spread her arms to make the sweeping gesture Rey had taught her, finishing with the hilt resting against her heart.

Anakin’s presence was suddenly beside Rey, burning with effort. He reached into her with all the darkness of the Force, and its terrible claws wrenched out the deadness and sickness the First Order had put into her. It hurt. It split her head with pain. Anakin cried out, perhaps sharing her pain. There was a sensation of tremendous strain, then Kylo was there too, though invisible: wild, breathing heavily, floundering around trying to wrap her in the Force.

 _I can only hold this open for a moment,_ said Anakin.

 _Who is —?_ Kylo was a wall of strength, his arms steadying her as he cast around for the people he could not see: Phasma and the unearthly third person shoring up the link between them.

 _Now!_ said Anakin. His power was haemorrhaging out, making a path for the Force to envelop Rey.

Only a split second had passed. Phasma was still standing, eyes closed, the lightsaber touching her heart. It was vibrating in the presence of so much Force, and Phasma had a smile of ecstasy.

Now the Force lay curled in the back of Rey’s head like a thundercloud. With a silent snarl, she reached through the strangling grasp of the First Order drugs and punched down that button.

The lightsaber sprang to life with a harsh buzz for an instant before falling from Phasma’s hands. Phasma had only time to open her eyes and give Rey a look of utter betrayal before she too was falling, onto her knees and onto the floor.

Rey stood looking down at her and breathing heavily. She was aware of Kylo’s breathing too; somewhere far away he’d been lending her his strength, and he was as winded as her.

_Can you see her?_

_Yes. Just. I hated her._

_I wish I didn’t enjoy killing her. I hate myself a bit._

_I thought of killing her in a lot worse ways than this,_ Kylo said grimly.

Rey averted her eyes from the body and reached for that place in her mind where she’d always stored her darkest fears. She stuffed the memory of Phasma’s death in there before her body could start to shake at the violence of it, and took a few deep breaths to clear her head. _I still have to get the lightsaber,_ she told Kylo. _It’s no use lying on the floor over there._

Kylo groaned, then she felt the Force stir around her again as he reached through somehow. Together they hauled and hauled at the hilt that stayed at first stubbornly on the soft matting of the floor, then rolled reluctantly, then finally flew into Rey’s hands as though coming home.

 _Should have been mine,_ said Kylo, without heat. Or maybe it was his idea of a joke.

Rey switched it on and cut carefully at the bindings that secured her to the weapons rack. They fell in glowing pieces, and she was free.

They waited in silence for a while, exhausted. Kylo was visible now as a shadow sketched over the barren white space of the training room. He looked around. _There’s someone else here._

 _Still can’t see me, can he?_ said Anakin’s ghost, appearing suddenly at Rey’s side. This was his younger self, cocky and self assured, hands hooked into his belt as he regarded Kylo. The sideways tilt of his head was very familiar. But a moment later his appearance shifted, becoming older with every passing second.

“Ben’s not really here,” said Rey. “It’s a Force sending.”

 _I wish I could know him, but I think I’m done at last_ , Anakin said. His face, as he looked between Rey and Kylo, held a complex expression; fond and wistful, full of knowledge and sadness. _It’s a shame. He might grow into something, in time. I’d like to see that._

 _Is that—?_ Kylo seemed to see Anakin’s ghost for a second. He took a sharp breath. For a moment, the two stood a pace apart, staring at each other.

Anakin reached out a hand as though to touch Kylo’s face. _You’ll do well, I think,_ he said, and faded away. Kylo stared at the empty spot in the air, looking stunned and bereft.

“He’s one with the Force now,” said Rey softly. “He did what he came to do.”

_Helping **you,** yes. Why is it always you? I begged for his help for years!_

His feelings hit her like a faceful of acid, and for the first time Rey realised what it was like to have all Kylo’s anger aimed at her. It was terrifying, but even so her heart was wrung with pity. Maybe the dark side was speaking through him, but it was fed by human emotions that Kylo had every reason to feel.

“I don’t know,” she said. “He just appeared on the _Millennium Falcon_. He sort of followed me onto Warlentta.” It sounded weak. Kylo’s gaze bored into her, unforgiving, and Rey tried again. “I don’t understand the Force. He told me he wanted to be with you.”

Kylo took a slow breath, his broad chest rising and falling in a way that drew Rey’s eyes. She wanted to touch it, to press down his sudden rage. But he managed to rein in his anger himself, changing the topic to something more practical. _Got an exit plan?_

“Yes,” she said. Her relief gave her a burst of energy. She turned and leaped up onto the nearest weapons rack. From there she could climb its metal supports right up to the ceiling. Pushing at the clips holding a ventilation duct, she lifted it off, climbed in and pulled it back into place after her. From there, she used the lightsaber to cut her way out of the duct and into the open ceiling space. Now she was in the hidden world of the Star Destroyer; the pipes and passages she knew like the back of her hand. This was a map she really did carry in her head; she’d roamed these interiors since childhood. It wasn’t even really dark; light leaked in from various entry points leading to the spaces above and below.

 _The forward port hangar usually has the fastest ships, said Kylo. If you can get one of the elite couriers, they’re pretty well armed too_. His voice was faint now; without Anakin’s presence, the Ysalamiri drug was creeping back through Rey’s system, undoing her connection to the Force.

Rey consulted the map in her head. There were some massive central structures she’d need to find to get her bearings, and then she would be on her way. She could trust her instincts here.

 _I’m heading for Serillon Station_ , Kylo said. _That’s where the First Order’s hiding. Steal a ship, get off the Star Destroyer, and I won’t be far away._ The last thread of the bond between them was unravelling fast.

“I’ll meet you,” said Rey. _If the Force wills it_ , she thought to herself.


	24. Leaving the Finalizer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey escapes from the First Order
> 
> (Trigger warning for violence, talk of sexual assault)
> 
> \- - - - -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- - - - -  
> To clear up what looks like an inconsistency: Kylo is "Ben" only when Rey talks to him directly. The rest of the time, even when Rey thinks of him to herself, he's still Kylo. The other name is too personal.  
> \- - - -

“Helmets off,” said Hux curtly, as soon as the Knights of Ren entered the briefing room. Behind his chair, the remaining Praetorian Guards tensed minutely. These were the Besh-shift guards; trainees lucky enough to be off-duty when Snoke and the rest had their bloody encounter with Ren and Rey.

The Knights stopped and pulled off their helmets before making a variety of movements intended to show respect - half-bows, salutes or in the case of one, a mere lowering of the head. That one, Hux supposed, was their current leader, Mordrek. He stood in front of the others, who clumped together near the door with helmets tucked awkwardly under their arms.

“Put them down on the briefing table,” said Hux, irritated. “And your weapons.” Like the rest of their armour, the things looked stupid: over-supplied with horns and protuberances of different kinds in a too-obvious attempt to intimidate. Nothing like the First Order’s sleek uniforms, that gave little hint of the wearer’s abilities. One should not need to advertise oneself quite so hard. Plus the Knights’ motley armour seemed always on the point of moulting off bits of leather or loose rivets, spoiling the _Finalizer’s_ pristine floors.

There was a pause, and behind Hux the Praetorian guards eased their weight forward onto the balls of their feet. Mordrek’s face didn’t change, but he unslung the heavy blaster from his shoulders. For all their weaponry and whatever weird Force powers they might have, Mordrek and the Knights were only six men among a vast multitude of First Order troops loyal to Hux. Mordrek thunked his blaster down on the table along with his helmet. The others followed suit. Hux sniffed, certain he could see flecks of mud trekked in behind the Knights.

“Report,” said Hux. “How was your mission to, ah, Dagobah, was it?”

“Not as productive as we would have liked,” said Mordrek. He looked appraisingly at Hux, perhaps trying to guess how much he knew. Hux folded his arms, waiting. Mordrek straightened up and went on. “Without the previous Supreme Leader’s guidance, we weren’t able to make much headway with the investigations he requested.”

“Looking for ancient Force-user artefacts,” Hux said.

Mordrek nodded, his face stiffening to cover surprise and Hux gave him a thin smile. Hux wouldn’t have known that if Ren hadn’t blurted it out during an argument months ago. Maker knew, Snoke had never been candid about his plans for the Knights of Ren.

“You’ve been absent a long time. I would like to see you in a more central role,” said Hux smoothly. “Perhaps I understand Snoke’s reasons for keeping you out of the way. There’s something to be said for keeping our subjects in the dark about you. They could fear you more as a shadowy band of enforcers with unknown powers. I believe that is how Snoke saw your role.”

Mordrek nodded. “Yes. We were to serve alongside but not within the First Order.”

“Good. Well. That has served its purpose. People fear us and obey us, and your reputation has contributed to that. But now I’d like you to be more visible. The Resistance, after all, has not been shy about advertising its Force users. Historically, Luke Skywalker was presented as a symbol of their cause; more recently, they’ve elevated this young woman Rey into that position.”

There was a definite reaction from Mordrek. No more than a blink, but behind him the other Knights shifted impatiently. “Yes. We’d like to meet this girl,” said Mordrek.

“And I’d like to hear what Snoke told you about her,” said Hux. “This prophecy, for instance…”

Again, a flicker of exchanged glances. Hux smiled to himself. They hadn't expected that. Rey’s interrogation had not been completely useless then.

“Dark rises, and light to meet it,” muttered one of the other Knights.

“She may be the adversary we are waiting for,” said another.

“Well,” said Hux. “Dark and light, again. Those are philosophical concepts. I’m more of a pragmatic person. A soldier. I’m interested in power.” The Knights shuffled and nodded. “As are you, I’m sure. And I think it would be a powerful thing for our Order, both as a military organisation and as a political one, to have a cadre of Force users like yourselves at the highest level. Not somewhere off in the shadows, but right here, where we are based. Do you agree?”

“Yes,” said Mordrek, with just the amount of hunger in his tone that Hux could approve. And it had to be an attractive offer. Since Hux last saw them, the Knights’ armour had taken on the battered, grungy look of hard use, and their faces were creased and weathered by planetary atmospheres. Their recent reports had not concealed the boredom and discomfort of their posting on Dagobah.

“Good. So, philosophy aside, what do you know about turning a light-side user to the dark? I understand it happened to Anakin Skywalker.” Hux tapped a screen beside him, and an image appeared. Historical footage of Anakin emerging from the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. “Darth Vader was created from one of the greatest Jedi.”

“A person makes a choice,” said one of the Knights.

“Why? How?” said Hux.

A ripple of unease passed through the Knights. That was one of the things Hux hated about the Knights: most of the time they seemed almost simple. Violent thugs with extra powers to boost their viciousness. But then there would be moments like this, where a secret current seemed to run between them, uniting them into one organism.

Still, well and good if it could be an organism that served him. “Why does a person choose the dark side?”

There was a mutter of different answers. “Cruelty,” said one. “Better to embrace the dark than suffer.”

“Shame,” said another. “Fear. Anger.” For a moment their faces became hard and proud as they looked away from pasts they did not want to remember. Phasma had found their personnel files, and what she’d shared with Hux made it obvious why they wouldn't.

“Well. That is the charge I lay on you. If I turn the girl over to you, you turn her to our side. Do what you must. She’s being given Ysalamiri-D complex drugs, so you’ll need to work in with the medtechs to keep her Force abilities under control.”

“I sense a disturbance in the Force,” said one of the Knights. He was a slight man with lank pale hair and a pointed face. He was looking around the briefing room like a loth-hound casting about for a scent.

Mordrek shut his eyes for a moment. “Ah. Yes. There she is. Something, anyway. I was beginning to wonder if her reputation was overstated, because we couldn’t feel anything in the Force when we arrived.”

Hux glanced at his chronometer. “We’re keeping her heavily dosed. I have no doubt she fights the effect. Phasma’s due to bring her in afterwards. Meanwhile let’s talk about how the war is going.” He walked over to the room’s map table and switched it on so the galaxy sprang to life around them as a holomap. The Knights gathered round, and Hux filled them in on recent developments.

An hour passed before Hux glanced at the chronometer again. “It’s not like Phasma to be late,” he said. He switched on the comms panel and clicked it through to the bridge. Mitaka’s voice answered. “Find Phasma for me, would you?” Hux ordered. “She’s meant to bring Rey to the briefing room. She was due fifteen minutes ago.”

“Right away sir,” said the Lieutenant.

But it was not right away. Another twenty minutes passed before the door swished open and Mitaka almost fell into the room, his face white. He barely glanced at the Knights, instead fixing his eyes on Hux with a look of terror. “Phasma’s dead. With a…it looks like she’s been stabbed by a lightsaber.”

“And Rey?”

“We don’t know, sir.” Mitaka’s teeth clicked. He was actually shaking.

Anything to do with Force users always ended like this: the rush of impotent fury, of humiliation, bitter as bile. Hux could feel it rushing up from his stomach, which was suddenly knotted into a ball of sheer hatred.

“You don’t KNOW? Where was she seen last?” he screamed.

“It looks like Phasma took her to one of the training rooms. She had Rey’s lightsaber. It looks like she was trying to get instruction from Rey on how to use it.”

“What a _stupid_ thing to do!” yelled Hux. “To take Rey into a room full of weapons…”

“The weapons had been removed,” quavered Mitaka. “And there was a pair of manacles. Phasma thought she’d secured Rey. But they were sliced through.”

“With the same lightsaber, no doubt. So now we have Rey loose _again,_ and _with_ her lightsaber, and overdue for her dose of Ysalamiri-D,” said Hux, almost choking with disgust. “The futility of dealing with such _idiots!”_ He whirled towards the Knights. “What about you? You can sense her, can’t you? DO something!”

The Knights snapped to attention, or what passed for attention in such a motley group. “Oh yes,” breathed Mordrek. “We’ll find her. And we’ll make her so sorry when we do.” The others were smiling, or at least showing their teeth. In moments they’d scooped up their helmets and strapped on their weapons.

Their eagerness for action gave Hux a little of his heart back. He threw Mordrek his pocket comm. “You’ll report to me. Channel one. Highest priority.” He turned to Mitaka. “With me. To the bridge,” he snapped. “Have any of those fools put a watch on the landing bays? She’ll try to steal a ship.”

“Y - yes!” said Mitaka. “I mean, yes, we will.”

“You will? _When?”_ Hux snarled, and strode out, grinding his teeth. Mitaka almost had to run to keep up.

From the lower decks of the ship came the low howl of alarms starting up. On the officer level where they were, warning lights flashed at every doorway and corridor junction. _Intruder alert! Intruder alert!_

The Knights thundered past, trailing a miasma of planetary dust and human sweat.

* * *

 

Rey listened to the muffled sound of sirens from her hiding place between the _Finalizer’s_ decks. They’d been going for hours. The sound lent urgency to her escape, and she’d pushed and wriggled and squeezed her way through gaps between the _Finalizer’s_ pipes and conduits until her arms and legs shook with the effort.

As she was taking a breather, she began to hear the rhythmic pounding of feet on the decking above and below her. The tiny splashes of light leaking between deck plates trembled as squads of stormtroopers searched the ship. With a sigh, Rey put her head between her elbows, parted a gap in the stiff bundles of wiring in front of her, and forced her way through into another dark space. From there she dropped onto the roof of a wide conduit spanning the whole space, and crawled rapidly over a pitch-black abyss.

Below her, the inner workings of the _Finalizer_ made dim bulky shapes stretching off into the distance. How often as a child she’d imagined being among this machinery come to life! And now it was; a wonderful music that throbbed and hissed and sighed all around her. The forces driving the ship made a complex shifting chord that sang to her from far below where the central drive shaft was. It confirmed that she was on the right track, and she thanked her lucky stars. The claustrophobic spaces she’d been moving through made it difficult to keep her bearings.

She reached the other side of the gap, and was back to wriggling through the ship’s inner workings again. The nearest deck was some twenty metres above her head now. She counted four, five, six squads crossing somewhere above her before she reached the other side. All around, the _Finalizer_ swarmed like a hive stirred with a stick.

She stifled a gasp as something thumped inside the conduit she was following. The thin metal relayed the sound of somebody else swearing, almost directly beneath her. There was a growl of laughter, cut off as somebody shouted an order. Some shuffling and clanking noises followed. It was a pretty obvious guess that Rey might be somewhere in the _Finalizer’s_ maze of air shafts; now they were being searched too. But Rey was not in the air shafts, but in the spaces between them.

Some time later, a new sound made her pause and cock her head to listen. The faint whine of a repulsorlift. Something small was flying not far away. She peered through a crack between two pipes and made out a dimly lit drone passing by, briefly visible between two stanchions. It disappeared and then returned, closer now. Rey lay flat, barely breathing, as the sound crisscrossed the space around her. If it was a heat-seeking drone, she was in trouble. The thing was bristling with antennae. While it might be easy enough to take one out with her lightsaber, she had no doubt it would broadcast its demise.

The sound retreated and Rey resumed her journey. She climbed around the thumping mass of a water treatment plant. It was right where the map in her memory said it should be. The sound of water in the pipes around her made her swallow. Her throat was dry. She couldn’t stay in here forever, without food or water. But she was still at least half a kilometre from the landing bay she needed.

She knew she was closer to the landing bay when she reached the conduits and fuel lines that powered it. There was the hum of energy transfer not far below her. Looking down into the darkness from the ledge that she was wriggling along, she couldn’t make out what it was. But she knew the smell of the power cables that fed the ship’s landing bay force fields. They used a particular kind of insulated casing that shed a distinctive musty powder.

A rapid metallic tapping noise made her look up. A constellation of green lights was approaching fast. Rey could just make out the spidery form of another search droid, one that scuttled along the pipes and beams between the decks. It was headed directly towards her. She reached down to unhook her lightsaber from the piece of cable she’d wound around her waist. As she did so, there was a high-pitched hum behind her. Another flying search droid was hovering close by. The sound of the landing bay power cables had masked its approach.

Shock made her overbalance and she lost hold of the ledge. She dropped through the darkness for what seemed like endless moments. Then something hit her on the back. She’d landed on the power conduits. The thick fabric of their protective casing had cushioned her fall.

Above her, the search drones had sensed movement. They’d be looking for heat. Quickly, ignoring the protests of her bruised back, Rey rolled over. Using her body to shield her actions from above, she cut a long slit in the power conduit’s insulated sleeve. A moment later she’d wriggled in next to the conduit and stretched the thick, scratchy material over her. Then she lay still.

The conduit kept up a steady vibration underneath her. There were still a few layers between Rey and the coolant that encased the power lines, but it was still uncomfortably cold.

A long time seemed to pass while the two drones searched the spaces above her. Eventually they moved out of sight, and Rey climbed out of the insulated sleeve. But before she could move away, the pipes around her reflected a fresh source of light. Another pair of droids had appeared below her. She wriggled back into her hiding place. Of course, the First Order would guess she’d try to steal a ship. Rather than search the whole ship for her, they had set a ring of watchers around the landing bays.

The droids passed out of sight. Rey took a few deep breaths. The cold had settled into her tired, bruised muscles and it was an effort to move again. But she had to. Kylo was expecting her to escape. If she couldn’t get out, was he crazy enough to break into the _Finalizer_ to look for her? That would be a suicide mission. She couldn’t let that happen.

How close was he? She reached for the Force, but it gave nothing back. The First Order’s drugs must surely be wearing off, but she was still cut adrift.

She ignited the lightsaber and began to cut into the insulating fabric, hoping she wouldn’t penetrate through to the power lines beneath. It was fiddly work, dragging just the tip of the lightsaber across the insulation and cutting out a large square next to a bulkhead where it wouldn’t been seen. Once she had pulled the fabric loose, she crawled along the top of the conduit dragging it with her. Where the conduit turned a corner, she wedged herself in next to it and wrapped the insulation around her. Now she was warm, and the heat-seeking drones couldn’t sense her. The constant vibration of the pipes around her should be enough to confuse their motion sensors, too. For the first time in hours, Rey relaxed. She took a few deep breaths, intending to test her link to the Force. Instead she fell asleep.

It was impossible to tell how long she slept, but when she woke up, her numbness to the Force had finally worn off. She felt awake and alive to the power around her. On the other hand, when she moved, her muscles were stiff and painful, and her mouth was parched. She couldn’t stay any longer in this dark hole between the decks.

 _May the Force be with me!_ she prayed silently, and reached out with it to learn what she could. No trace of Kylo’s signature in the Force. Rey sighed. The connection between them had never been an on-demand service. She would have to do this on her own.

But no, there _was_ something! She tried again, taking deep slow breaths as she felt around delicately with her other senses. Abruptly, something in the Force moved and twisted. Something nearby. Slimy and corrupted. Grasping hands reaching for her. Rey sat up with a gasp.

She waited, staring into the dark and listening. No sign of any searchers, so she started crawling towards the landing bay, pulling her blanket behind her. Every now and then she’d huddle under it while a drone flew by or, in one case, scuttled right over her. Each time left her with her heart in her mouth. But the drones were not her real fear. Now she’d sensed it, she couldn’t shake off the feeling that she was not alone. There were other Force users nearby, and they meant her harm. Her movements now were slow and cautious, slinking through the labyrinth of the between-decks.

At last though, she reached her destination: the conduit she was following vanished into the huge knobby cylinder of the field generator that she could hear as much as see. The landing bay was right on the other side of a durasteel bulkhead encrusted with pipes and circuitry. Here, close to vacuum and far from any living areas, the walls were engineered to create a perfect seal. It was almost pitch dark. Rey had to rely on touch and feel and her memory as she climbed around, looking for a place where she could cut through. She couldn’t keep hold of the insulating blanket in the vertical spaces she had to cover. She dropped it, hoping no search drones would pass by. It caught briefly on something before flapping off down to unknown depths. On instinct, Rey climbed a little lower. Her feet found a series of beams, and on the wall in front of her, parallel lines of gigantic bolts as big as her head. Her memory told her the deck of the hangar must connect at this level. She started traversing her way along the row of bolts. There should be a corridor leading to the landing bay at this level, and before that, a room where flight suits were stored and maintained. She might be able to cut her way out of the between-decks and into that. And if she was going to steal a ship, what better disguise than a First Order flight suit?

Her calves knocked against something. She reached down and felt the throb of a coaxium-mix supply line running into the wall. Beyond the wall she could hear the sigh of a ship powering down and the noise of heavy machinery. This must be where the bigger ships fuelled up. Not the little ones, like the TIE fighters, that refuelled while hanging in their cradles. Their supply lines must be branching above her like an enormous tree, but she couldn’t see them in the darkness.

She waited, clinging on to the bulkhead, halfway up. Were the ships on the other side of the wall all refuelling? Was there one that was ready to go? As if in answer to her question, there was a hiss of steam, then a pump fell silent somewhere nearby.

Just then, the space around Rey became lighter. She looked over her shoulder and her heart jumped into her mouth. A scatter of green lights. Search drones. The way they halted and turned in formation told her they’d seen her this time.

Sucking in a big breath, Rey ignited her lightsaber and started to drive its blade into the bulkhead. Just the tip. It had to be enough. She knew exactly how thick the plating was. The Force sharpened her senses, and she traced a line in the durasteel. A circle. Behind her, the drones came closer. She could hear their binary chatter over the buzz and hiss of her lightsaber.

_This is not regulated behaviour. This is not a recognised operator. This is an intruder._

_Target acquired._

The glowing circle was complete. Praying to the Force with all her might, Rey clenched herself against the bulkhead and shoved her foot against the cut-out. It fell in with a clang that was luckily drowned out by the noise of engines on the other side. Rey doubled over and dived through the hole. The sides burned her elbows and thighs, but there was no time to think about that. She was rolling and scrambling across the decking of the landing bay, a place that seemed furiously loud and bright compared to the between-decks.

Evidently the Force was with her, because she’d emerged behind a row of storage containers that were taller than she was, and close enough to the wall to hide the hole she’d made in it from all but the highest guard posts. She looked up fearfully. She could just make out the edge of the control blister in the opposite wall. Somebody in there only needed to turn and look down, and they’d see what she’d done. Or they’d see the search drones!

The game was up. Both drones emerged from the hole behind her and buzzed around her, screeching in binary. A siren started up nearby.

There was a shout, and some kind of mercenary squad ran into view, dodging between refuelling stations and cargo containers. Rey’s eyes widened in shock. She’d never seen such troops on a First Order ship. They had an aggressively individual look, yet there were enough similarities to mark them as a group. All of them wore heavy black cloaks or coats over armoured jackets encrusted with spikes and rivets and defensive plating. They looked more like bandits from the badlands than anything to do with the First Order. But there was nothing ambiguous about the weapons they were unhooking from their harnesses; they seemed to have everything from staffs and blades all the way up to hand-held rocket launchers. And when they turned the narrow eye-slits of their metal helmets towards her, there no mistaking the aura of cruelty and darkness emanating from them. These were the Force-users she’d sensed before. And they looked horribly familiar, though Rey couldn’t remember why.

But there was no time to think, with them running towards her and firing. Despite their heavy armour, they were fast, and they were fanning out to cut off her route to the armoured scout ship that had been her first choice. Rey swerved towards the access ramp of a light courier ship, which was closer. Before she could reach it, a shell from one of the rocket launchers exploded the ramp. Rey still tried to use her momentum to leap up and grab the handrail, which still remained, and pull herself up to the hatch that way. It broke off. She landed, rolled to duck under a fan of blaster fire, got up and skidded around a corner.

This was some sort of repair bay off the side of the main landing stages. Half a dozen ships were parked there. Rey sized them up with desperate haste. It was obvious none of them would fly. Engine casings gaped open, shielding was missing, cables dangled out of open gaps, and half-melted components were stacked against the walls.

Then Rey spotted a hatch in the wall. She might not have noticed it if she hadn’t spent so much time in the between-decks. Reaching it, she leaned all her weight on the metal wheel that unlocked it. It spun open. Rey slid inside and pulled it shut after her. Now she was back in the dark again, clinging to the wall outside the landing bay. A catwalk disappeared into the gloom in front of her. It was the obvious route, so Rey turned her back on it and started climbing the wall instead, hooking her fingers into the thick tracery of wiring and pipework that covered it. She couldn’t see anything at all, but that was a blessing: the only light in here would be the droids searching for her, and she needed them to be somewhere else right now. Hopefully they would join her other pursuers in searching the derelict ships in the repair bay.

She was a long way up before she heard the hatch below her open again. A ray of light entered the space below, then was blocked by bodies entering the between-decks. Someone shouted for a light. Soon torches were following the catwalks, throwing a confusion of shadows into the pipes and machinery that stuffed every cavity of the space. Looking up, Rey saw her goal, the vast ramified web of supply lines leading to the TIE-fighter cradles. The ceiling was just above it. Rey eased herself out of sight on top of one of the struts holding up the ceiling and crawled along it until she found a niche between two connecting beams.

Again, she needed to cut her way back into the landing bay. Only this time she should be high up among the launch cradles. Could she cut in without being seen?

When she’d constructed the lightsaber, there had been a component that controlled the length of the blade. Could she alter it, in the pitch dark, perched above an unknown depth? What if she dropped something?

 _Only if the Force will help me!_ She took a dozen deep breaths, each slower than the last, trying to sink into a trance. There was the Force, humming around her! She reached out to Kylo. _Help me!_ She could sense his presence! But it was wavering and fractured like a reflection in fast-flowing water. She could pick up nothing more than a general mood: determination, relief, and a frustration mirroring hers. A brief flash of stars, of lightspeed. He sensed her, that was all. Rey snarled with frustration. Lightspeed couldn’t sever their connection, but sometimes it threw it off badly.

Then something much closer snapped its attention onto her. A predator, anticipating the torture at the end of the chase. Suddenly Rey felt like a mouse hiding in the walls. Or someone lost late at night who has forgotten that gnaw-jaws hunt by senses other than sight.

Rey pulled out of her trance, the urgency of escape pressing on her worse than ever. She reached for her toolbelt. Her hands found only the piece of cable she wore to keep the lightsaber tied to her waist. Of course, no tools! The First Order had probably thrown them away when they searched her. How stupid, how _tired_ was she to forget that? Out of all the offences against her, this was the one that caught her off-guard. Her eyes prickled with tears of frustration, or some dry parody of tears, for she was very parched.

After a moment, she gritted her teeth and pulled the lightsaber out of its loop. She had to hope there was enough machinery around her to conceal what she was doing. Though that seemed impossible: the blade was a screaming brightness in that dark space as she forced it through the bulkhead in front of her. Behind her the darkness pressed on her back until her heart pounded.

After what seemed forever, the cut-out she’d made sagged half open. Rey stopped there; a disc of durasteel falling dozens of metres onto the deck far below would not go unnoticed, even with all the swarming activity going on down there. No sign of the dark warriors, but plenty of stormtroopers. Looking up, she could see she was right up under the ceiling. A score of TIE fighters hung beneath her, neatly lined up on their rails. Entry ports for the pilots waited like a row of closed mouths on the opposite wall facing her. The slides that accessed the cockpits looked like tongues. There would be some kind of ready room for pilots there, on the other side of the hangar. A larger TIE fighter sat on its own cradle, reached by a catwalk directly beneath her. Instead of the familiar hexagonal solar collectors, it had long, sharp pointed wings. A TIE Silencer.

The edges of the cut-out had cooled. Rey boosted herself through, dropped down onto the catwalk, and sprinted the short distance to the cockpit. A klaxon sounded off in a series of rising screeches.

Immediately the hatches on the other side opened and TIE pilots in black flight suits slid into their cockpits. The nearest ones fetched up only metres away. She could see every detail of their shiny black visors staring at her, see their hands dancing over their controls. Half a dozen laser cannons were turning in her direction. Even through the plasteel shields, the sound of their ion engines powering up was a deafening scream.

Panting, Rey threw herself into the pilot’s seat. It was not completely unfamiliar - she’d trained on a simulator not too different. The next few moments passed in a blur of punching buttons and slamming on the launch systems and shields. There was a heart-stopping instant of silence when she slid forward the throttle that opened the power lines to the drive, then the engine kicked in with a throaty roar. This was a high-powered ship and it trembled with the urge to go.

And not a moment too soon. When she could tear her attention away from the control panel, the distant pinging of blaster fire became suddenly urgent. There were just so many enemies! Not just the TIE fighters hanging beside her, but also squads of troopers below who had pushed heavy cannons into position to fire at her. Fire and light sizzled off the screen in front of her. Through a cloud of smoke she made out another ship on the deck below, a battered scout vessel, releasing a cloud of steam as it powered up. It had an air of menace quite distinct from the other First Order ships around it.

Rey’s hands dropped to the weapons console. The launch button for the frontal cannons seemed to fit itself under her thumb, and a targeting screen lit up in front of her. Rey aimed straight down. Two hard kicks and the ship jumped under her as concussion shells spewed out of its frontal launchers.

Clouds of smoke billowed up from the deck below. When it cleared, the scout ship was still there, and moving towards a launch. It must have fearsome shielding. A concussion rocked her ship. Some of the weapons within the landing bay had found their range. It was only a matter of seconds before the TIE fighters hanging beside her did the same. If she didn’t leave now, she’d have no ship to leave on.

Swearing, she pushed the joystick forward. The ship bucked. It was still held in its launch cradle. With a gasp of terror, Rey stomped on the release pedal. The engine roared and the ship swooped down on its launching rail before the racked TIE fighters. Rey found the laser controls and spewed lines of deadly light behind her, then opened the throttle again. Now the ship was free, and launched with such force that she was pushed back into her seat. She was barely able to pull around in a screaming turn before she hit the opposite wall of the hangar. Weapons fire blazed towards her from all sides, but she had the ship pointed to the stars outside. She throttled it open all the way and the ship answered with an unstoppable rush of power. Then there was only the darkness of space, and the bulbous curve of a huge gas giant looming above. Striped and feathered with softly glowing clouds in a dozen shades of green, it looked close enough to touch.

Rey piled on the power while looking for a way to escape her pursuers. To her amazement, there was a secondary control panel on her right with the standard rig for making lightspeed. This was definitely a step above a standard TIE fighter! Rey’s dry lips cracked in a wide grin. _The Force is with me indeed!_

But she couldn’t manage the sublight drive and prime the hyperdrive; with the _Finalizer’s_ external canons targeting her, there was no way she could let go the sublight controls for even an instant. Fire seemed to be coming at her from all directions. She dodged and jinked wildly, spraying torpedoes at the TIE fighters pursuing her, all the while scanning for the ice rings or moons that must surely circle such a large planet. Difficult to see on the night side, where she was. _If only Finn were here, manning the guns_ …Rey snorted angrily. She was doing all right on her own. _One, two, three, four_ …the Force was as palpable as the ignition button under her thumb, and it guided her torpedoes straight to the TIE fighters behind her. One by one they ended in splashes of light against the velvet darkness.

If she could find some space junk and hide…

Something hit the ship with a booming impact, and suddenly the consoles were alight with warnings. The air filled with a burning smell. A quick glance to her right, and Rey could see that the hyperdrive console was a mass of blinking red lights. There was no escape to lightspeed now.

She pulled up the feed from the rear scanners and her heart sank. That shabby old scout ship was back there, a long way away, but somebody had uncanny luck with their targeting. Such a wave of evil seemed to emanate from the ship that for a moment she could hardly breathe. She had a vision of baying hounds, red mouths tearing her to pieces. She shook off the image and the hint of cruel laughter that accompanied it. There was no time, with missiles streaking towards her. She threw her ship into a series of loops and curves, but the handling was noticeably slower. Another torpedo flew past, almost close enough to touch. The next one hit…something. Suddenly the ship was spinning out of control, the engine roaring helplessly. Rey wrestled it back under control - something was out with the port nacelles, but she could compensate enough to steer. _Just_. She aimed for the gas giant, hoping to hide in the tops of its clouds.

She skimmed lower, trying to pull up nav charts. There should be a moon just beyond the sunlit limb of the planet as she approached the dayside. There it was! A thin blue crescent, slowly rising into view as she rounded the curve of the gas giant. Long minutes passed while she struggled with the controls; it was surely only the Force that kept her ahead of the missiles looping behind her. And the scout ship, with its miasma of evil. Her ship was weakening like a wounded animal; it was only a matter of time before it lost the battle with the gas giant’s gravity. Her only hope was to make a crash landing on the moon first.

Somehow the straining engines hung on long enough to take her to the moon. The sun had appeared from behind it, making it a blazing crescent. Impossible to make out any detail. There must be an atmosphere; as she dropped lower she could see it burning around her. The ship’s shields juddered as though on the point of collapsing. It would be a fiery death if they did, long before she hit the ground. Ground which must be coming up faster than she would have liked, somewhere under the clouds below.

Then she was under the cloud cover and rushing towards a vague grey landscape, too dim to make out. Rey pulled up on the joystick with every particle of strength she had. The ship bucked and shook, then some of its jets stuttered to life, making its nose lift a fraction before braking feebly. Now the ground was close. Rey switched on the repulsorlifts and the ship wobbled like a flung plate. The ground was slowing to less than a blur. At the last minute Rey braced herself against the seat. Then the ship crashed.

It wasn’t the worst crash Rey had been in. She’d had some spectacular failures when she built her first landspeeder. But this was a crash from _space!_ Rey thanked the Force or whoever built this ship that it had such top-class shielding. She was unharmed - or at least, she could find no new damage beyond the bruises and burns of her escape from the _Finalizer_ \- and already her brain was ticking over at top speed. She had to get out of here. But she wouldn’t get far without something to revive her strength.

She looked around and spotted the ship’s inflight consumables. She pulled the two nozzles down and sucked gratefully, gulping down huge drafts of water and some kind of liquid protein/carb supplement. The tingly feeling of returning energy was almost overwhelming. She must have been at the very limits of her endurance.

Soon her stomach was full and her sinuses ached with drinking so much so quickly. It was time to leave.

The hatch clunked open and Rey trotted down into a dim world of rocks and greyish grass whipped by a fitful wind. Low clouds kept up a spitting rain. Rey pushed herself into a run. There were spines and ridges of rock everywhere; plenty of places to hide. But she had to get clear of the wreck. It would have a tracker on it somewhere; the First Order wouldn’t let a nice piece of machinery like that get misplaced.

And indeed, there was another sound coming through the low clouds. The wind and rain distorted it, making it seem to come first from one direction, then another, but there was no doubt it was a sublight engine, and it was coming closer. Rey picked up speed, jogging between ridges of dark grey rock, this way and that. There was no plan to her escape; this was an unknown world. All she could do was make distance. Run, fight, hold them off, hope Kylo could find her.

The sublights cut out and were replaced by the throaty whine of repulsorlifts. Somewhere behind her, a ship was settling down next to her wrecked TIE Silencer.

 _Ben!_ she called silently. And felt something in response - a rush of power. She knew that determination, that fierceness. Her heart rose to meet it and to equal it, and now her feet had wings. She let the Force guide her down winding paths between rocks that were wind-sculpted into weird points and curves. As she opened herself further to the Force, she understood what Kylo was doing with such intensity that it left him speechless.

 _I can do it!_ she said, and took hold of the power that was all around her, just as he was showing her. The burn in her muscles faded and she stretched her legs out into a long lope; the air came and went in her lungs, warm and easy. Her focus on this aspect of the Force was all-consuming, and her connection to Kylo faded. But she had what she needed. Strength flowed through her and she vaulted over low ridges and bounded between high stones tirelessly.

But there was something else in the Force. Like ink, it spilled between the rocks, an insidious black tide reaching its fingers towards her. Finding a way. Following her. Her extravagant use of the Force lit her up to them like a beacon. _Run, little one. We see you. We like to hunt._

The fact that they could break through her intense focus was chilling. Rey snarled and redoubled her effort, shaking off the tendrils of thought that crept around and sought to weaken her.

Rey ran and ran. _Where was Kylo?_ She was all alone in this pathless wasteland. Then another sound rose above the dull patter of the rain. An insect whine. Swarming after her.

Skimmers!

She stopped, hands on her knees, head hanging, thinking. It had been a mistake to imagine they were chasing her on foot. She would only exhaust herself the more she ran, while her pursuers would be fresh. So she must hide, or fight. It was hateful to be reduced to such poor choices, but there it was.

There was shelter in an scooped hollow in the rocks that kept off the worst of the rain. Her hold on the Force was weakening; not from want of strength, but because every time she entered too fully into a trance, the grass and sand between the rocks seemed to fade, drowning in a tide of darkness that rose and rose towards her hiding place.

Yet in the real world they couldn’t seem to find her. The noise of the skimmers rose and faded, now closer, now further away, circling and crisscrossing the shattered territory.

Then suddenly an engine roared out from behind the nearest ridge. The rider was holding up a fan-shaped heat-sensor. It turned at once towards Rey, and the rider’s gaze followed it. He threw his fist in the air, pulled up a comm unit from his handlebars and spoke into it, unhitching his blaster as he did so.

Moments later Rey was trying to do what she’d only seen Kylo do, striking aside blaster bolts as they sped towards her. It was terrifying and uncanny; she couldn’t let herself think, only pray to the Force that her blade would match her opponent’s rhythm. Her lightsaber hummed and snarled, spitting blue fire whenever a blaster bolt connected.

No point staying pinned down; she’d have to take the fight to him. Rey covered the ground between them in a couple of bounds. Her opponent gunned his engine to fly away; Rey picked up a stone and threw it, using the Force to hook it into his skimmer’s air intake. It was always a weak point. The skimmer coughed and dropped out of the air, and Rey was onto the rider with her blade swinging. He tried to block her with the butt of his blaster, and there was more than human strength in him. He could use the Force too. But Rey found it contemptible compared to the power streaming through her. She knocked aside the blaster and cut him in two.

Only the Force could have warned her to duck, and she did. Somebody else was shooting at her from behind a nearby ridge. Rey dropped down the other side of a rock and ran down a narrow defile, rounding it in time to meet one of her hunters. Their fight was sharp and brutal - he had some kind of electropike. By this time Rey was literally seeing red; she smashed him in a haze of blood that seemed to fill the whole landscape and the air around her.

Back to the sniper then…but he’d moved, and a line of fire sent her running from her hiding place, She dodged into another little ravine that promised shelter, but suddenly a man dropped directly in front of her. His padded armour made him look twice her size, but he moved like lightning, bringing a vibroblade down against her. Their blades locked and they strained against each other. This was another Force user. Whatever fed her strength, fed his too. The eyeless helmet pushed closer and closer to her, and her arms were shaking with the effort to hold him off. Her lightsaber spat, its blade writhing, unstable.

Then another shadow loomed out from behind her opponent. “You found her!”

He leaned in, laughing. Rey’s anger spiked. Too many people on Jakku had thought they could make a sport of hurting her, and they’d learned their mistake. This one would too. She aimed a kick at him, twisting her weight out from under the man who had her almost pinned to one of the rock walls. He staggered and the two blades came loose with a scream.

“That lightsaber doesn’t sound too good,” said the second man. “Let me fix it for you.” A wave of Force rolled off him, almost knocking Rey off balance. She raised her lightsaber but the air seemed to resist her. Before she could adjust her swing, the man’s staff connected with her hand. Lunging in, his hand snatched hers, slammed it against the nearest rock, and held it there while he drove the butt of his staff into the hilt of her lightsaber. The blade became a fountain of fire, split into lashing tendrils, then went out.

“Oops,” he said. “I heard those were rare.”

“Stupid weapons. I always hated the way Ren carried on, like his lightsaber made him a prince,” said the man with the eyeless helmet. “What about you, are you a princess? I’ve always wanted to screw—”

Rey’s wordless yell of rage threw both men flat on their backs. But they kept hold of their weapons and after a brief, savage tug-of-war she had to jump clear. They were right behind her as she ran out of the defile. Now she was in an open space, rocks dotted all around her. The rain slashed down, and it was getting darker. It was hard to know how many were pursuing her. The two she’d just fought followed her, taunting her. She threw rocks at them, hard enough to make them jump for safety a few times. They could have rushed her, but why should they? There was the sound of skimmer engines all around. The rest of them would arrive any moment.

Then they were all about her. Bulky armoured men, faceless, implacable. And not just these uncanny warriors, but stormtroopers too were arriving. She had only the Force to hold them off. She did her best, but the dark warriors had the Force too, boosting their reflexes and making the stones she threw skip past them. Larger and larger stones…there were bodies lying on the rain-drenched ground all around her, and she could not even remember how she fought them. This was no Jedi lightsaber battle, it was nothing more than a Jakku brawl. She snatched up weapons from the dead and dying and fought until they snapped in her hands.

But she was tiring. Something hit her on the knee, and she was down. The men advanced, making tall shadows against the sky.

One of them raised a weapon, ready to bring it down and split her in two. Rey was at her limit, she had nothing left to draw on. She lay panting, looking up at them. This was how she’d always known it would end. How every child of Jakku ended, sooner or later. She had thought to escape a life of petty brawls and violent endings, but that had been a false hope. All the power she’d gained, and the universe just replied by sending more powerful thugs to beat her up.

“Hux wants her alive, remember,” growled a voice.

“He’s a fool if he thinks he can keep her under control,” said another. “We should never have told him about Snoke’s vision. _He’s_ not Snoke, and _she’ll_ never be any use to us. Finish her. Hux won’t know.”

“Let’s have some fun with her first, though,” said the tallest, clearly the leader. “I thought we were called from Dagobah for a bit of rest and recreation. I’ll be disappointed if all we get is another fight.”

“A desert rat,” said one of the men. “How do you like getting wet, scavenger?”

Somebody muttered something Rey couldn’t catch, and there was lewd laughter. “Take off your wet things,” said a voice.

Rey started to get up, but a sharp blade came down to hover in front of her face. The men gathered around.

Footsteps approached, crunching on the gravel.

“You’re late to the party, Ten,” said the leader without looking round. “Nearly missed out.” He gestured to Rey to get up. She didn’t move, and he swung his blade back into a strike position. “Or I could change my mind,” he said.

“I think I’m just in time,” said a voice, flat and deadly.

Suddenly a spike of red plasma erupted from her tormentor’s chest. For a moment nothing happened, then something thrust his body out of the way and Rey was staring straight at Kylo. His dark eyes burned into hers in an instant that would fold a whole universe of time into its embrace.

But there was only time for her brief nod, _I’m okay,_ half a sob, tears welling into her eyes. She registered his relief, then he was was already turning away, swinging his blade, cutting through the horrified Knights of Ren. The night was lit by the red flame of his lightsaber. And behind it, Kylo was a prince of darkness and fury in a swirling cloak. Ardent, unstoppable. Rey propped herself up on one elbow, crying and laughing, watching the savage geometry of his blade tracing curving lines of death.

Then there were no more enemies. The blade went out and he turned to her.


	25. A Kiss in the Rain

How long had it been since the first time they saw each other? Weeks, months at least.

He’d taken off his helmet. How startled she’d been! She’d expected the face of an older man. One of those cruel faces she’d often seen on Jakku, its arrogance made uglier by the abuse of power.

The arrogance had certainly been there. But she’d never expected the rest of that face: young and handsome, dramatically so, with his high cheekbones and unusually-slanted eyes. Red lips, soft white skin unmarked by the sun or wind. Those black eyes had locked on hers and he’d given an imperious tilt of his chin, those full lips quirking as though to say, “See? I’m quite something.” Well pleased with himself, and waiting to see her reaction.

And that had been the key: he craved her reaction. He wanted awe, admiration. And she didn’t give it, because when she looked into his mind, she saw all the things he didn’t want her to see. Loneliness, uncertainty, fear. A divided soul full of a child’s anger.

She had no room for pity then, because whatever was tearing his soul to pieces would hurt her too.

But now, this was a grown man facing her. Whatever he’d done since she’d seen him on the _Supremacy_ had left its marks on him. He was thinner. There were new lines around his eyes, and there was less vulnerability in the firm set of his mouth. His dark stare, as he looked down at Rey, was patient and self-possessed. It seemed he might not speak at all. There was a need in him; it swirled around in the Force between them. But whatever it was, he would not beg.

He just stood there, breathing so heavily she could see the steady rise and fall of his shoulders. He’d fought like a force of nature; he’d almost ripped up the landscape by the roots to defeat the Knights of Ren and the other First Order troops who’d followed them here. He’d done it _for her._

“You were amazing,” said Rey. Though there were no words for the awe she felt right now. She’d had a lifetime of loneliness, her heart hollowed out by all the ships that had launched and left her behind. But now there was one that came for her. _He flew from the other edge of the galaxy to save me!_ It was unreal.

“Why did you? Come for me, I mean.”

He stood staring at her, oblivious of the rain. His lips moved silently, shaping themselves around the beginnings of an answer. There was much he wanted to say. Rey caught glimpses of it through their Force bond: pain and shame and regret. But he’d become more reserved during their time apart, and he wasn’t about to blurt out the first thing that came into his head.

“When they shot Leia,” he began at last, but his voice cracked. He shut his eyes, and his lips were pulled back in a snarl of animal suffering. Then he shook his head, tossing his wet hair impatiently out of his face. His eyes, when he opened them again, had the intensity of a blow. “My mother…she came to me, I felt her in the Force. Just for a moment. I felt the bolt go into her heart. I knew,” his voiced cracked again, but he forced the words out, “I knew then I’d been on the wrong side.”

He dropped his gaze and stared dumbly at the ground. “She still had hope for me.” His voice was filled with a pained wonder.

He didn’t move. Rain ran down the wet snakes of his hair to fall around his boots. “I can’t undo my mistakes,” he said in a low voice. “But I can try to be the man she hoped I’d become. And I know what Leia would have wanted. Even if I’m nothing, even if I’m _worse_ than nothing, I’ve got to help you do whatever it is you’re going to do.” He looked up then, and his eyes burned directly into Rey’s soul. “And I want to do that.”

Rey didn’t know, until that moment, that she was going to do anything beyond survive the next moment and the moments after that. But the Force told her something different. _There was, there has always been the seeds of something within you; a greater life than your own._

There was more Kylo might have said; luminous thoughts flickered in the Force between them, shy and sidelong as little fish. There was another conversation waiting to be had about the meaning of their Force bond. But now was not the time, with Rey so dazed and tired. She merely nodded silently, and pulled her feet under her, ready to get up. But her legs felt rubbery and her arms, when she tried to push herself up, gave way. She paused, head hanging, rain dripping off her hair. She was beyond cold.

There were two words Rey had always had trouble saying; but she’d managed to say them to Anakin. Now it seemed right to say them to Kylo. Maybe this was how one stopped being so alone.

“Help me.” She held her hand up to him.

Kylo stepped forward and pulled her up in a rush. She stumbled up and fell into his arms. Kylo made a little sound in his throat, maybe relief, maybe surprise. Rey couldn’t tell. Her face was buried against his chest, feeling it move under her as he breathed. How warm and solid he was. She shivered, her legs trembling as cold and exhaustion took their toll, but his arms tightened to hold her up easily. His hand spread to cover half her back. She wanted to sink into its grasp.

“You’re frozen.” There was a dizzying moment as he picked her up. Rey clutched at him in a panic, almost too dazed to understand where the ground had gone suddenly. But he held her securely, and she was rocked by his long strides. Then he put her feet gently on the ground, stooped, and picked up his cloak. He’d dropped it to fight, of course. Now he wrapped it around her.

Rey tried to thank him, but all that came out was “Th-th-thk-k-k-k.” She tried to hold the edge of the cloak, but her hands wouldn’t work.

Kylo put his arm around her and held it tucked against her. “Did they hurt you?” he asked.

She burrowed her head into his warmth. “Mmmm-nnhn.”

“Look at me. Are you all right?”

She looked up. He was inches away. Eyes wide with concern, all his other emotions—and she could feel them rolling around—held in check. Truly, he’d grown while they’d been apart.

“I’m ok-k-k-kay. J-j-j-j-just cold. And t-tired.” She took a deep breath that helped steady her. “I was running a long time.”

“And fighting. I saw how you held them off.” There was another note in his voice. It was more than approval. Now that strange vulnerability of his reappeared, softening his features. In his naked gaze she could read admiration. The unexpectedness of it made her dizzy.

He must have picked up her thought. “You _matter,_ Rey. I had to save you, if I could.” His words had an unsettling undercurrent, almost frantic. _I was so afraid I wouldn’t get here in time!_

“What? I’m okay!” Her sharpness was a reflex. She regretted it the moment she said it.

He flinched, but then there was a flicker of understanding in his eyes. “I know. I know. You can take care of yourself.” His voice was a husky whisper against her head. “Now we need to get you back to my ship. Somewhere warm and dry.”

Neither of them moved. At last Rey gave a small sigh. What was the point of her pride, of always needing to be strong? Always being a loner…

She straightened up so she could look him in the eye. And there he was, after all, not asking and not offering, but hoping. Rain trembled on his long lashes, ran down his face, beaded the full curves of his upper lip. Rey reached up and wiped it away. He held his breath as she smoothed her fingers across his brows, his high cheekbones, his chin. His face, his actual face, mobile and alive and warm under her fingertips! How had she forgotten the little moles, the way his ears stuck out? She didn’t know why these imperfections should be so dear to her, but they were. She touched them all, wonderingly, tracing the shell of his ear with one fingertip, then the deep curves of his lips. Surprised, his breath puffed out against her palm. Last of all Rey touched the white seam of the scar across his face.

“I did this,” she said softly. “I wish…” It wasn’t true to say she was sorry; she still had nightmares about their fight in the snow.

“We were fighting on opposite sides,” said Kylo softly. The stillness in the Force between them finished his thought. _And now we’re not._ The Force had always known the truth.

“I’m glad it healed,” she said, and traced a finger over the scar again.

Rey couldn’t take her eyes off that scar, that imperfection in his beautiful, imperfect face. It must have been painful when it happened. He could have lost an eye.

Blinking against the rain, Rey pulled herself up on tip-toe. There was a fine seam where the skin had knitted across the burn. Her lips closed slowly over it as though there was some other wound still to heal.

Kylo’s arms tightened around her and he pulled her even closer. “Rey,” he murmured, his voice low and hoarse so that the wild rainswept landscape around them became the most intimate place imaginable. His arms around her were stronger than walls and a roof, and the heat of his gaze shut out the wilderness.

Rey pulled back and looked into his eyes again. A world of darkness. So much behind them, in his head. How could she fall into that space inside which was soft and burning and chaotic and yet, in this moment, her greatest safety?

Reaching up again, she laid her lips against his. She meant to be gentle, but as soon as she felt the softness, the plushness, the warmth of them, her mouth opened of its own accord. His mouth moved in response, loosening, and Rey sucked on his lips, greedy for more. The soft sound he made then, a little “ah” of surprise, let her taste the wetness inside. She ran the tip of her tongue inside his lips, savouring the heat of him. He made a soft sound deep in his throat, like a low moan, cut off at once as she felt his teeth come up against hers. His tongue reached in to caress hers, then brushed the arch of her mouth, a hot, surprising sensation. The feeling of _want_ exploded in her and she sucked eagerly at his mouth as it moved over hers.

Kylo groaned again, then pulled away, panting slightly. Rey looked up at him, surprised. With a rueful shake of his head, he laid his fingers gently against her mouth. There was pain in his eyes, and desire. But something else, something more than she’d ever seen in her midnight fantasies of him: kindness. Seeing her confusion, he stroked back the wet strands of her hair, saying, “No more. Not now. Your teeth are chattering.”

“Th-th-they’re not,” said Rey. Then the grey world around her did a strange thing that made the ground come up to try and hit her. Kylo caught her just in time. The last thing she remembered was him settling her into his arms, and then the world swooped off its own way into darkness, rocking, rocking.


	26. What the Cat Dragged In

Niney was waiting just inside the _Pretty Thing’s_ hatchway. “Look what the cat dragged in,” she said.

Kylo levelled a warning finger at her. “Some respect, please. This is what I’ve been looking for since we left Crait.”

Niney rocked from side to side, main camera canted up to observe him with Rey draped across his arms. “Mission accomplished, then,” she said, sounding unimpressed.

Kylo felt his face breaking into a genuine smile anyway. It had been a good day, after all; far better than he had any reason to expect, with his immediate enemies defeated and Rey safe - not only safe, but lying in his arms! Unconscious, her face was so soft and unguarded, and even more beautiful than he’d remembered. The afterglow of their kiss was still making his heart dance in his chest.

And this unusual little droid had played a part in all that. There was no telling whether Niney cared about praise, but it couldn’t hurt to try. Better than finding out she could be jealous, or vengeful, anyway, and Kylo stooped to pat her dome as he went by. “Niney, you’ve been amazing. We’d still be stuck in The Haze if you hadn’t figured out that short-cut. Force damn it, without you I’d still be stuck on Canto Bight.”

Niney purred and went back into the cockpit, spinning out her grapples and pulling herself up onto the co-pilot’s seat. “I’ll keep watch. They’re sure to send more troops against us.”

Kylo carried Rey through to the _Pretty Thing’s_ bunkroom. Or maybe “stateroom” was a better word; Tuaua and Teezia had had rich boyfriends and an image to maintain, so the _Pretty Thing_ was not short on luxury.

He settled Rey gently on the bed. He hadn’t paid much attention to it before, usually falling asleep in the pilot’s seat; but now Rey was there, the sheets couldn’t be soft enough, the covers warm enough. He pulled the satiny-soft bedding over her. It was blue, sprigged with white flowers. Under it, Rey looked so small, so battered by fate. Her face so pale, like another flower on the blue satin. _When had she become so beautiful?_

When indeed? He’d had every reason to hate her. Perhaps he would have, if she’d really aspired to take his place. If she’d become Luke’s greatest student, or the Last Jedi, or the apprentice Snoke craved. Kylo’s lip curled as he remembered how eager Snoke had been to discard him once Rey appeared. “Bring her to me!” he’d roared, his eyes glittering with a frightening hunger. Kylo had been such a fool not to recognise what was going on. Though Snoke, being Snoke, hadn’t the least idea what to do with Rey once he had her. _Besides kill her, of course._

And then she’d become his mother’s favourite. Rey, the daughter she’d never had. Even Anakin had looked out for Rey, when he’d had barely a word for Kylo.

But Rey had never wanted any of it. She had a comet’s course, burning into their lives from some outer wasteland. She’d held to her own way, radiant and solitary. So alone.

He plumped up the pillow and spread out her wet hair, touching its silken heaviness with near reverence.

Rey had lied that she was okay; as he’d carried her to the ship, he’d found the places where her clothes were burnt and slashed through, and felt the sticky wetness that was not rain. Here on the ship there was better lighting, and he could see the damage. Pulling himself away, he left the room and called up to the cockpit.

“We’ll need some bacta, Niney. Where’s the kit?”

“How would I know. I’m not a medical droid.”

“And you can’t do brain surgery either, I bet,” muttered Kylo, and went to look for himself.

Niney burbled something in binary, then said, “There are two troop transports and ten TIE fighters coming in to land.”

Kylo gave up his hunt for the ship’s medkit. Returning to the bedroom, he turned up the heating, bundled the covers around Rey and secured the crash-straps over her. That was as much as he could do for her right then. Niney was starting to make alarm noises. Kylo ran back to the cockpit and vaulted into the pilot’s seat. “I don’t suppose you’ve…”

“I have input our last course in reverse,” said Niney smugly.

“We’ll only make the first jump. I don’t want to go too far from Serillon Station,” said Kylo, firing up the sublight drives. All was dark outside the _Pretty Thing;_ Kylo snapped on the imagers and the landscape reappeared as a greenish holomap. He shoved the joystick forward and the ship lifted into the sky with a kick. “Thank our lucky stars that Tuaua and Teezia liked the fast life,” he said. Niney burbled her agreement.

They jumped to lightspeed and emerged shortly afterwards in a ring of debris circling a nameless white dwarf star. Kylo killed the engines and let the _Pretty Thing_ drift.

Rey stirred under the covers when he went to check on her, but did not wake. He crouched down by her head. Once before he’d watched her like this, unconscious. Even then he’d known that she was more than just another captive. His heart had beat faster at the thought that she might lead him finally to Luke’s hidden location. _This was the girl with the missing piece of that puzzle inside her head. When she woke, he’d solve it, and win Snoke’s approval for good_. He’d waited like this, savouring the anticipation. The way the Force had stirred around her meant she was surely the key to his future. Once he’d got what he needed from her, his path would be clear.

But he’d hesitated. Her sleeping face had had such a brightness about it, as though she’d carried the sun and the desert air in with her. Those lips, with their slight, finely drawn curves, were soft and yet resolute. He’d noticed how rosy they were. The curve of her cheek had been slightly furred with the finest dust. Or maybe salt. A question had flashed across his mind, so exciting and alarming that he suppressed it at once: _Why not lick it and find out which?_

He’d hesitated, and he’d lost everything. In a matter of weeks he went from a leading role in the First Order to shivering in a fathier stable with only children and animals for company. Where once he’d commanded thousands, he could barely command the fall of a pair of dice. He couldn’t even command himself.

Rey was his catastrophe. Yet all the months he’d been lost in the dark, the bond between them was one thing that had buoyed him up. He couldn’t hate her, even seeing her living the life he should have lived. Now he watched over her, and all he could feel was relief. Colour was returning to her cheeks, though her face was pale compared to when they first met. He laid a hand on her forehead. Still cool, but at least she’d stopped shivering.

Her eyes opened and she blinked up at him. He sat down carefully on the edge of the bed. He’d found the ship’s medkit; now he held out the bacta patches in their sterile container. “You might need some of these.”

She nodded but didn’t move to take them.

“Are you hungry?”

“Yes. Yes, I am,” she said. Her voice was low and scratchy. She looked absolutely exhausted.

Kylo went to the galley and made up a packet of hillindor fowl soup. Rey drank it down in grateful, ungraceful slurps. Her face lost its pallor. Kylo tore his gaze away from the sight of her licking the last drops off her lips and busied himself sorting through the bacta patches.

“Show me your arms,” he said. She held them out silently, and he wrapped the smaller patches around the cuts there. The worst injuries were the burns on her elbows. “How did you get this?” he asked. She seemed in no mood to talk, but maybe this was a way to coax her story out of her.

“I used the lightsaber to cut my way into the landing bay from between the decks. The metal edges were still hot when I went through,” she said. She looked up forlornly. “Um. About the lightsaber…”

“I saw.” He indicated the bedside locker, where he’d put it after pulling it from Rey’s makeshift belt. The casing was split and warped. Rey’s eyes teared up at the sight.

“It’s probably been through worse,” said Kylo. “Later we can take it apart. The crystal’s what really matters. Let me see your hands.”

He took her hand — small, sinewy, and toughened with the ghosts of old calluses — and worked the fingers one by one. She winced. Two of them were almost certainly broken.

“I didn’t even notice!” she said, wonderingly. “I was so…” She shook her head, smiling slightly.

“I know. In the middle of a fight, you don’t even…” Kylo shook his head too. He often felt strange after a fight; both appalled and impressed with himself. He wanted to tell Rey how he admired her fighting spirit, but it didn’t seem like the right time. Instead he concentrated on moulding bacta splints around her broken fingers instead.

“My legs too,” said Rey shyly. “I burned them.”

He nodded, biting his lip. He’d been wondering how to approach the burns on her thighs, which he’d noticed as he was carrying her. Now Rey was looking at him, half frightened, half something else. “Do you want me to do it?” he asked, and the idea started a slow pulse somewhere below his navel. He looked away quickly.

She nodded silently, eyes wide. Obviously trust was difficult for her; she wouldn’t meet his eye as she let him fold back the covers and pull down her pants, which were stained with blood. The burns looked bad. The skin had peeled off and the wound was abraded. Kylo laid on the bacta patches as carefully as he could. Rey tensed and hissed through her teeth. Then the bacta took effect, and she relaxed. Kylo kept his hand on the patch as it bonded with her skin. Just past there, almost under his thumb if he stretched it out, was her inner thigh, where the firm span of her leg muscles became gloved in utmost softness. He’d brushed that spot by mistake and she’d made a tiny sound. He could just stretch out his thumb. It was right there. So silky-soft he couldn’t be sure he’d felt it at all. He wanted to.

Rey’s eyes widened. There was no doubt she’d read that thought. Kylo let go and held out the bacta patches to her again. His hand was shaking slightly. “You want to do the other leg?”

Rey gulped. “No, you do it.”

She looked afraid to breathe, yet her eyes held a silent appeal.

He laid the second patch on her other thigh. His hands slowed, moulding the edges of the bacta onto her skin. Then he was still, staring her directly in the face. She was breathing in tiny, short gasps, and her lashes were beaded with tears that magnified her eyes.

He lowered his voice as much as he could; he wasn’t sure he could keep it steady otherwise. “Am I hurting you?”

“Yes. No,” she said in a tiny voice. “Don’t stop.”

Kylo’s breath caught too. He’d thought that kiss had been just a reaction to being saved. Battlefield lust was a thing, after all. A primal reflex. Nobody read anything into it afterwards. But this…

He kept his eyes on her as he stroked the pad of his thumb over her skin, warming the bacta onto it. “There’s some Force trick for healing wounds,” he said. “But I don’t know it.” And in that moment he was glad; he could have stayed there stroking the soft pale silk of her thighs forever.

She put her good hand over his, and he stopped. But she wasn’t pushing him away. Rather, she was… _was she trapping his hand to keep it there?_

He spread his fingers gently under hers and traced the contours of her muscles. Very carefully, he put his other hand on the pillow by her face and leaned down, closer and closer. “You’re very beautiful,” he said. “And I don’t know what to do about that.”

“Really?” She looked up at him as though he’d said something miraculous. Strange that she could be so tough, much tougher than him in many ways, but still so innocent. Unbelievable, but his phoney-sounding compliment had taken her completely by surprise. She really didn’t know!

But she did know about bargaining. Her look of wide-eyed wonder only lasted a moment before hardening, her mouth clamping into a firm line. Her thoughts brushed against him with an unwelcome sting: _A handsome face, a kiss in the rain, that’s all very well! But I’m done with being used by people._

Like a shadow in the Force, the incident in Snoke’s throneroom hung between them. Tired as she was, her potency coiled about her, and she was aware of it. _A powerful tool._ Snoke had thought so. And so had he. _With her beside me, I will win!_ Like a fool, he’d made his offer...

She sat up so quickly he had to lean away. Hurriedly, he took his hand off her thigh.

“I don’t want you _that_ way.” The Force shivered between them as though ready to break at any hint of a lie “Not any more,” he clarified.

“What do you want?” she asked. “Who are you really? Are you Kylo, or Ben?”

He sighed. He’d been dreading this question. He looked down and found he didn’t know what to do with his hands. Probably keeping them off her thighs was a start. “I’m nobody.”

“Nobody? You? _Thousands_ lived or died at your command.” Then she went still, thinking, and her legs tensed under her. That was the thing about the Force: sometimes he felt the blow from a hard word coming before it struck. “ _Billions_ died, if you count the Hosnian system.”

“I did not…I would _never_ have given _that_ order! Hux wanted to test his weapon!” It sounded so pathetic, the way his voice went high and desperate.

“Sometimes I dream that you stood and watched.”

“I did!” he said savagely. “I watched from the Finalizer. I remember thinking I could die inside my mask and armour, and nobody would know. I would just keep marching around, doing the same things. Nothing would ever change.”

A long moment while he glared at her, and she just…took it in fearlessly, her gaze softening as she absorbed more than he’d said aloud.

“But it did change,” she said softly. She reached forward and took his hand with her uninjured one. Turned it over and looked at the back, inspecting it like a piece of scrap she might sell. Or maybe she was wondering at the size of it. She tested the way her fingers couldn’t fit round his palm. Without looking up, she said, “So tell me. You told me the truth about me. Now tell me the truth about you.”

“What did I say? What truth, I mean?” He’d never planned to say anything clever to Rey; of all their fleeting conversations, he couldn’t imagine what might have stuck in her mind.

“That I have no family.”

_Ah. That._ “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you with that. I thought…well, I thought family was… _could be_ a burden. You’d be stronger without it,” he said carefully. _Still true._ Though it hurt that she’d been there when Leia died, and he hadn’t. “You found a family in the Resistance, I guess.”

She smiled sadly. “I thought the Resistance could be my family but…it’s always so crowded. People always wanting to know where you are, what you’re doing. And they wanted to make me into something I’m not.” She nodded to herself. “I do well enough on my own.”

The thought gave him a pang. Rey, always so alone. “I think you’ll always travel by your own light, Rey. People will follow you, you know.” Her answering stare was so intense that he had to look away. He ached to pull her closer, he couldn’t stop obsessing over the feel of her hand in his, the feel of her _lips_ on his. Why then was he practically urging her to leave? What a fool he was.

But clearly her mind wasn’t on her future. She sighed and gave him a half-smile, an exquisite curve of her lips, before her expression turned serious. “What is the truth about you? What are you? Kylo or Ben?”

He recognised that stubborn pursuit of truth all too well. For justice, really. His mother had been the same, always asking the hard questions and demanding what was right. How Kylo had hated that! He’d had enough problems of his own, only Leia could never see them.

But Rey saw. Saw the darkness, the choices. She looked at him now fiercely, as though she believed he could make the right choice _despite_ the darkness in him.

And maybe he could.

She was still holding his hand, waiting. Lips parted as she waited on his next words.

Kylo couldn’t kiss those lips. He hadn’t the right.

His own lips trembled, and formed themselves around the words that could finally break Snoke’s spell. “I’m Ben.”

His breath went out of him in a great unclenching of the heart, letting go of so much that was vile and shameful about himself. Without it, he was lighter. Warmth rose to his face, softening lines of tension he hadn’t known were there.

“Ben,” Rey whispered. Her eyes were shining.

What a soft name. He had a fleeting vision, sweet as honey. Running across a sunlit room. Voices called his name, _that_ name, and his mother’s arms reached down to him. His father’s hand warm and heavy on his head for an instant, ruffling his hair.

Rey saw it too, and her eyes filled with tears. For the first time he truly understood what she’d never had.

_I would give you anything,_ he thought. Everything. But even if I ruled the galaxy, I couldn’t give you that.

Rey let go of his hand and reached up instead to clasp the back of his head. “When I was on the _Finalizer_ I used to imagine us doing _this,”_ she said, her voice a throaty whisper. His heart missed a beat as she wound her fingers into his hair and tugged on it gently to pull him closer. “I imagined how angry it would make them all, to know we would do this instead of giving them all the hate and violence they wanted.” Her fingers rubbed his scalp in gentle strokes.

The Force swirled around them and he caught a glimpse of her thoughts. Love, and all its powers. For the dark, love was a binding and a compulsion. But with love one could also endure, and heal. She wanted to know what love would do, here in this place, this time, between the two of them.

Now it was his turn to look at her as though she were a miracle. There was no way now to ignore that hammer pulse in his groin, slow and insistent.

He settled his weight on his elbow next to her and leaned down so they were face to face. “The _Finalizer_ was a hateful place. And I was a hateful person. Maybe I still am.”

She didn’t draw away, but her look went right through him, as though she could scour out the darkness in every corner of his soul. Maybe she could, with those blazing eyes. “Do you want to be? Hateful, I mean?”

“No. But I can’t undo the things I did. Some things can’t be forgiven.”

“So. Start again,” she said. “You’re speaking like you’ve got no power in this. But I _saw_ what you did out there, when you were fighting. It was incredible. You have strength. And now I’ve met Snoke…” she paused, and her eyes darkened at the memory. “Do you understand how he was using you?”

“I’ve thought a lot about what he did to me. Since I was a child, with him always feeding me lies. But I probably haven’t thought as much as I should about what he did with me.” His voice roughened and he had to drag the last words out. “With me as his tool. What we did to other people.”

Rey nodded, but said nothing. Just that luminous gaze boring into him, demanding — what? Why did she make him so exposed? The Force was giving him no clues.

It was impossible, what could he be thinking? That he’d come up with some justification for what he’d done? That she’d forgive him? _I was a terrible person when I was in the First Order, and a wretched piece of scum when I left. Do you want me to admit all that?_

With an angry grunt, Ben dropped her hand and pushed himself away from her. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, _I’m sorry!_ There, I’ve _said_ it! And what difference will it make?” He stood up, glaring down at her. “I’ll take you back to the Resistance and drop you off. I can go into the Unknown Regions and none of you ever need to hear from me again!”

“No!” She was quick, certain, her hand held out to him. “Sit down. Please. I don’t know much, but I know that’s wrong. The wrong answer.”

He stood staring down at her outstretched hand. In her urgency, she’d forgotten the bacta splints. The last thing in the world he’d do was hurt her injured hand. But he could maybe take it very gently. Would the terrible weight around his heart loosen, if he did that? Would some of that pain coiled around him fall away? It felt awkward anyway, standing by the bed. He sat down again.

“It’s always the wrong answer with me, isn’t it?” he said wryly. “What would make this time any different?”

She gave a strange smile, nodding to herself as though something had just become clear. “Time!” she said, pleased, as though that explained everything. Ben cocked his head, puzzled, and she went on. “It’s always the wrong time. On Starkiller you offered me knowledge. And you were right, I needed a teacher. But you weren’t the right teacher for me then. On the _Supremacy_ you offered me power. And it was the wrong time for that too, with my friends in danger.”

Ben let out a long breath of disappointment. “I can’t offer you any of those things now. I know less than I thought I did. All I’ve got to offer now is me, and I’m pretty much nobody now.” _A petty gambler, an addict, a useless drifter who slept in a stable._ Did she know?

“Ben. What if you’re what I need?” She threw her hands out in an appeal. “I want to know you better. You know me in ways nobody else can, nobody that doesn’t have the Force. And I know you. If I trust in the Force at all — and it’s never led me wrong — then I know who you were once, and who you were meant to be.”

Ben took her hand again, very gently, and her fingers curled around him. “I had visions of you, you know. Before we met. You were always walking across the desert, by yourself. I didn’t know who you were. I wanted to … let you know you weren’t alone. To walk with you.” He looked down, wincing. “But then I became what I am. I wouldn’t blame you for wanting to leave.”

“What I want to do, I’d rather not do alone,” said Rey. “But I’m not going to put my friends in the Resistance in danger. This is Force business. I hate what happens to ordinary people when they get involved.”

Ben nodded. _She needs an ally._ Maybe there was hope there. Because, Maker knows, he needed an ally too. _Oh please!_

“But look, Anakin had a message for you,” Rey went on. “‘Finish what he started’, he said.”

“I know. It’s the only thing he ever said to me. When I could still hear him.” For a period of Ben’s childhood, Anakin’s ghost had pursued him, a shadow lying in wait to hiss the same message. It had been unsettling. Somehow the worming voice that became Snoke was always able to step in and explain it all to Ben. Snoke had splendid plans, he said, so Ben could succeed where Darth Vader had failed.

“Free the slaves, he said.”

That hit him with a jolt. “Really? He said that? Snoke told me…” he began, then bit off the words. His mind was racing. _What_ had Anakin said exactly? Had Ben ever heard Anakin’s words without Snoke interpreting them for him? All in a moment, it came clear to him: Anakin’s wretched beginnings, the injustices done to him, the things that lay on his conscience before he became Darth Vader. The pain of knowing he was destined for greatness, yet evil flourished regardless in every crevice of the Empire he hoped to control. That his power protected no one.

“You were…were you a slave, on Jakku?” Ben asked gently.

Rey’s eyes darkened, looking into the past. “Yes and no. On Jakku, everyone had all the freedom they could pay for. Or fight for. For the weakest ones, that wasn’t much.”

“That’s not right. It was even more obvious on Canto Bight…” He saw her startled glance. “That’s where I was, yes. They had slaves. Children, a lot of them.” _And when I met them, I learned how you became so strong._

Rey fixed him with a fierce look, and her hands clenched in her lap. “I want to take down the First Order. Will you help me?”

“Me?” He laughed bitterly. “How is that going to work? I can’t go back with you to the Resistance. They’ll kill me on sight.”

“No. Without the Resistance. Just you and me.”

“How?”

“The First Order wanted to make me a symbol of their right to rule. A mystic figurehead to replace Snoke, so they could say “Look, even the Jedi are on our side”. And we’ll do exactly that. Depose Hux. Take over. And make them do what we want.”

The audacity of the idea was so grand that Ben began to laugh. He laughed until he was leaning weakly against the bedhead. “Just me and you, we’ll walk into the _Finalizer_ …Yes!”

“And free the slaves. We'll change the rules. You and me, yes!” And now she was looking at him with fire in her eyes, and finally he could read what the Force was trying to tell him. _So tired of being alone._ She wanted an equal. Still laughing, he pulled her hand to his mouth and kissed it, like a knight swearing fealty to his queen. Her eyes sparkled, and now there was no mistaking the invitation in them. She rolled towards him, putting her arm around him so she could pull herself closer.

He dropped his head and took her lips in his mouth. She pressed the whole length of her body against him, and her thought sizzled along their Force bond, which had suddenly become loose and light, a doorway between them.

_I have waited for this._

There was that cloud-soft place his fingers yearned to touch. Still amazed that she would allow it, he slid his hand across her leg and kneaded it gently. Rey responded immediately with the hunger of her mouth, drawing him in. He ran his other hand across the sweet curve of her hips and felt her back arch so her breast brushed against his chest. It sent a rush of electricity through him even through their clothes. Clothes that seemed suddenly unbearable.

Ben rolled her tunic all the way up. Pulling out of their kiss with a gentle nip of her lips, he drew back so he could look down at her breasts. They were so beautiful with their flushed skin and their deep pink nipples standing up. They begged to be kissed too. He laid his lips against them softly, printing soft kisses all over them. When his tongue lapped her nipple, Rey gave a little gasp of pleasure that sent his blood rushing to his cock.

Sitting up, he pulled off his tunic and shirt in a rush, and undid his belt. Rey wriggled out of her tunic too then stopped him with a palm laid flat on his chest. “That one time I saw you,” she said. “I wasn’t sure what I saw was real.” She stroked her hand across him as though measuring the width of him. Smiling shyly, she leaned up to plant a line of kisses from the base of his throat down the line between his pectorals. Every touch lit his skin on fire, and the glow travelled down below his belt. _If she started to kiss him there…_

She looked up at him, startled. “Would you like me to?”

_Would she really…?_ His pants suddenly felt unbearably tight. He yanked them down. His erection sprang out of its confinement. Rey gasped and then laughed nervously at her own reaction. She didn’t seem to know where to look.

“That must be uncomfortable!” He nearly choked as Rey reached down and stroked it curiously, then wrapped her whole hand around it. The tip was already slick. She startled as it jumped in her hand. Ben gasped and pulled her hand away hurriedly. “If you do that, I’m going to…” She gave him a worried look, and he went on. “It’s just that I want us to take our time.”

Just looking at her looking at it was almost enough to make him come. “It feels like velvet,” she said. “I want to touch...” She gave him a questioning look.

He nodded and shut his eyes, holding his breath. Her fingers touched him, tentative at first, then stroked the length of his shaft before closing gently to encircle it. He was so close to coming there were starbursts behind his eyes. He pushed her away again. “Stop. I want to fuck you. Now. Are you sure this is what you want?”

She nodded, seemingly speechless.

He put his hand between her legs and started rubbing, feeling the warm wet folds slide over each other. Along the Force he could feel Rey’s focus narrowing to a point: _There! There! There!_ His searching fingers found it, a nub over the tip of her pubic bone. Rey’s eyes went wide and her body gave a little jerk. “Oh please…can you…” Then she was pushing herself into his hand, guiding him into a rhythm. He took it up, pushing back harder. Her back arched like a bow in response, and the sound of her snatched breaths made his pulse pound.

He didn’t think he could wait. He’d had months, _years_ of privation! A life without pleasures, without love. To hold this astonishing woman had been an impossible fantasy, unbearably distant from his real life. His touch could only destroy her. And yet here she was in his arms, waiting!

Easing his weight over her, he started to put a knee between her legs. Her sudden squeak of pain made him stop. Of course, she still had those burns on her thighs.

He thought for a moment. “Roll over on to your side,” he said. She nodded and did as he asked. He settled onto his side behind her so she was spooned against him. He reached an arm around and slid his hand between her legs, fingering her. She shuddered and pushed her mound eagerly against his hand. He eased her legs apart so he could lay his cock between them. She was so wet down there! She rocked her hips, feeling how it made him slide up and down between her folds. He moaned. “I can’t…” It felt so good. He was going to explode. “Touch me,” he said, his voice hoarse with need. “Are you ready?”

For a moment the Force spun between them and he felt her puzzlement. She didn’t know how the next bit went. She’d seen more sex than she’d wanted to as a child on Jakku, but only from a distance. _What was this going to feel like?_

_Like I’m giving you everything I have._ The Force opened the doorway between them. He could feel the throbbing hunger in her core, and she felt his aching desire. _I just want to…_

She picked up his thoughts. She put a hand between her legs and gripped him. He bucked against her, teeth clenched against the overwhelming sensation as she guided him to enter her. And he was in, with one long, hot thrust.

Rey bucked frantically, grinding herself against his knuckles with a wildness to match his. Through the Force, he could feel her pleasure building, as blinding as his own, and it made him work his fingers on her in time with his thrusts.

Roughly she took his other hand and slapped it onto her breast. Ben’s hand clenched uncontrollably on it but she only arched her spine more, pushing the pebbled skin of her nipple even harder into the palm of his hand. She was shoving her hips back into his with wild urgency, gasping and making little mewling noises, and there were strange sounds coming from his throat too, as though he was choking on the impossibility of such pleasure.

He couldn’t hold back any longer. He pulled Rey against him for a final thrust that sent him over the edge at last in a blinding release that spilled everything he had to give. _Everything I have is yours…more, more, I want to give you more!_

Rey ground against him, faster and faster, sliding herself along the wetness leaking from between her legs. Her need was flame-bright through the binding link of the Force. Propped on one elbow, Kylo had only to lean past her shoulder and take one hot lascivious lick of her breast and she came too, shuddering against him with a long, high moan as he sucked and fingered her.

Finally she calmed against him, sprawled back in a bliss that mirrored his own. He lay with an arm flung around her, marvelling at the tough delicacy of her frame, the cooling flush on her skin, the way her ribs moved as she breathed, slower and slower. There were a thousand things he wanted to ask her, but it wasn’t going to happen tonight. Instead he’d just lie here and try to take in what it meant to have her curled trustfully against him, asleep.

Theirs had to have been the strangest courtship in the galaxy, was his last thought before he fell asleep too.


	27. Honeymoon

It took a month to bring down the First Order.

It passed in a rush of flying and fixing things, stitching their way secretly through hyperspace across the galaxy. Meanwhile all around them a dozen coalitions and alliances strained towards open war. The First Order was as brutal and elusive as ever, and the Resistance stood between it and the systems trying to rebuild a shaky, fledgeling New Republic. “We fight, not as your leaders,” said D’Acy, in her broadcasts through the Holonet, “But as midwives to the peace that will be born through our struggle.”

Yet Rey always thought of that month as her honeymoon. Even though they would one day marry — roaring crowds throwing white flowers at their feet, the tropical resorts of Gatalenta and shimmering cloud cities of Bespin offered for their enjoyment in the days to follow — it was that first month that made them a couple. Not just the gasping nights when they lay pooled in sweat and wonder in each other’s arms, the _Pretty Thing’s_ satin sheets tossed around them like a shipwreck. It was also a month of days when they discovered the rhythms of domestic life: flying the ship, cooking in its small galley, eating, clearing up afterwards. Rey thought she might never lose her amazement at finding another person beside her, handing her the very thing she was about to reach for.

Or she’d be poring over star charts, tracing the patterns of First Order dominance, and Ben would come in silently carrying a wrap from the _Pretty Thing’s_ well-stocked wardrobe. “Here, you must be getting cold.” And he’d tuck it around her shoulders.

“I was! I was sitting here so long, I didn’t realise…”

Before he even knew he wanted kaf, Rey would bring it to him and he’d take it with grateful surprise. “You’re right, I’d love some!”

“You’d forget to eat if I didn’t remind you!” said Rey, marvelling. She never would.

But their domestic bliss was underpinned by a sense of purpose from the very beginning. Every look, every touch, every time Rey threw away all her misgivings and abandoned herself to loving Ben with her whole heart, all were made more precious because of the limit hanging over them. Sooner or later, they must confront the First Order. The fiercest love would become meaningless if they did not hold it up to that test, and risk all.

Even dazed and serene as she was after their first night together, and with her muscles slow as syrup, Rey had the beginnings of a scheme forming in her head. That first morning, she sat in the cockpit of the _Pretty Thing_ to consider it, while outside the viewport, rings of ice passed in a slow shining procession. Ben came in with their third cup of kaf and gave it to her, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. She sipped on thedrink and he settled in the co-pilot’s chair, stretching his legs across to lay his feet in her lap. His feet were large, bony and calloused from wearing the same boots for months. Rey kneaded them, pleased by the intricacy of joints and sinews. Feet were a clever solution to a difficult engineering problem; with Ben’s feet she got to appreciate it on a more massive scale.

“Have you got a plan for getting into the _Finalizer?”_ Ben asked, wriggling his toes with pleasure.

“Niney says they’re short of ships. We could get into the _Finalizer_ inside one we’ve salvaged. We just need somebody to bring it to them.”

“I know somebody who could do that,” said Ben, and his long mouth quirked up into a rueful smile. “The wickedest girls in the galaxy. They own the _Pretty Thing_ too, so we can return that at the same time. Now, can we find a wreck that only needs a bit of repair to get going? Those are rare.”

“When I was in the _Millennium Falcon_ , we stopped to scavenge fuel from an old ship’s graveyard. It’s not known outside of the Resistance. I saw one that would be perfect. I don’t know if you’ve seen those Rothana Heavy Engineering assault ships?”

“Not the old _Acclamators_ from the Clone Wars?”

“Same idea, but much smaller. I think they’re called _Conquistadors,_ and they’re modified to carry troopers, not droids. Still quite a bit of room to carry speeder bikes, armoured walkers, artillery pieces…I didn’t have time to check if it still had them, but it looked like it was in good condition.”

“Would it go?”

“Somebody had taken the hyperdrive capacitors, probably to repair their own ship. But I know where we can get some.” In answer to Ben’s questioning look, Rey smiled. “Niima Outpost.”

But there was a call they had to make before they started their campaign against the First Order. The Resistance was still in Warlentta; the First Order’s attack had only stiffened the Warlenttans’ loyalty to them. Resistance broadcasts were still coming from their capital city, including Aquifer, the secret channel for stormtroopers. Niney hooked into it and caught a few words, making Rey startle and then smile as Finn’s voice filled the cabin, passionate and inspired.

Desperate, the First Order had been throwing ever-younger and more poorly-trained stormtroopers into battle. Even the New Republic’s most hardened soldiers were shaking their heads in disgust, saying it felt like they were fighting children. “You lost your childhood when the First Order took you,” said Finn. “Don’t let them steal your future too. You deserve to know peace!”

Ben walked into the cockpit. He was about to say something but stopped, frowning. Rey searched his expression, her smile slipping off her face.

Ben listened for a moment. “Is that…?”

“I have friends in the Resistance. You don’t have to like all of them. Just remember, we’re trying to change things for the better.”

“He’s persuasive,” said Ben, chewing his lip, eyes hooded over thoughts he’d rather not share. But when he glanced up again at Rey, he seemed to come to some conclusion. “He was a good friend to you, then?”

“The kind of man who’ll risk his life for people he cares about,” said Rey. “And he’ll be worried about me.”

“He’ll try and talk you out of attacking the _Finalizer,_ ” said Ben, frowning. “With or without me.”

“Yeah, he will,” said Rey. “Friends do that sort of thing.” She kissed him firmly on the mouth. “At least, I guess they do? But we’re going to the _Finalizer_ anyhow.”

Luckily Rey could still remember the codes for the Resistance at Premier House. Connix picked up the transmission. When she saw who was calling, she looked so boggled that Rey laughed out loud through her own sudden tears. “Yes, it’s me! And I’m all right!”

Connix yelled over her shoulder and a moment later Rose and Finn were leaning into the screen too. They were all laughing and crying and miming hugs at her through the screen.

“Was anyone else hurt at the rally? I was knocked out…” Rey asked as soon as she could.

“We’re all okay. Leia’s funeral though…we missed you.”

Ben was hanging back out of sight of the imager, even so Rey caught his flinch out of the corner of her eye. Their Force bond was suddenly alive, dark and jagged. Rey wasn’t sure if the sudden tears in her eyes were for him, or for Leia, or for herself. “I’m sorry I missed her funeral, Finn. Kark it, I wish I could have _protected_ her so there _was_ no funeral!”

Finn glanced over his shoulder at Rose and Connix. Connix grimaced and shook her head. Clearly it was still too painful to talk about.

“We’ll tell you about it when we see each other, hey?” said Finn gently.

Rose leaned past Finn into the screen. Her natural enthusiasm had matured into a powerful positivity. “But it wasn’t _all_ bad. The funeral was _huge,_ Rey. She would have been amazed to know she was so loved. There were rallies, on Warlentta and throughout the galaxy. We’re more unified than ever. Did you know that? Where were you?”

Rey told them about her captivity on the _Finalizer_ and how she’d escaped.

Finn laughed grimly. “I guess Phasma finally got a lesson she didn’t expect. Fits, really. She was big on education.”

Rose gave an admiring whistle. “You sure she’s really dead? I thought Finn got her good on the Supremacy.”

“I’m really sure,” said Rey firmly. “Lightsabers don’t leave much room for doubt.”

Finn laughed with delight. “Yes! You ended up with your lightsaber again! That thing always comes back to you!”

“Sort of,” said Rey. “I crashed on one of the moons by Serillon Station, and the Knights of Ren came after me. I had to fight all of them at once, and the lightsaber got broken.” Rey’s voice started to dry up mid-sentence. Finn was listening to her adventures with that big grin she loved. She could bask in his pride and relief, but the hardest part of the conversation was coming. In a moment that smile would go out like a light.

“How did you escape?” asked Finn.

“Ben fought them too,” said Rey simply, and gestured him forward into the holoimager’s range.

Connix, Rose and Finn stopped talking at once and froze, their eyes wide and still. The moment stretched endlessly while Rey’s heart thumped painfully in her chest.

Finn was the first to move. He pointed angrily into the screen. “What?!”

“It’s okay. He’s with me.”

“Rey, if you’re in some kind of trouble…”

“No, I’m fine. Ben saved me from the Knights of Ren. I was exhausted, my lightsaber was broken, and they were about to execute me. If he hadn’t come when he did, I’d be dead.”

Just then Poe burst in. “Hey sunshine!” he smiled, arms opening as though he could hug Rey through the screen. Then he did a double-take on Ben. “That’s not….what’s he doing there? Are you bringing him in?”

“No!” said Rey. Ben tensed beside her and Rey threw a glance at him. Though his jaw was jumping with the effort of self-control, he remained silent. “We’ve got something we need to do though, and we’re doing it together,” she said firmly. “Me and _Ben.”_

When he was angry, Poe had a frown to match Ben’s. He was glaring into the imager, his brows making sharp black angles. “He’ll be tried for…”

“He won’t be tried for anything,” cut in Rey. “He killed Snoke. And rescued me. Look, what do you think Leia would have wanted?”

There was a tense silence. Rey reached behind her to take Ben’s hand, keeping it low so the others wouldn’t see. The sight of them holding hands —or worse, Ben putting a protective hand on Rey’s shoulder — would not reassure her friends at all.

Commander D’Acy must have been watching just out of range from the imager. She stepped forward now and leaned down, her wise eyes searching Rey’s face then lingering on Ben’s for longer. Then she stepped back with a nod. “I think it’s what Leia would have wanted too. Rey knows what she’s doing. And that boy…” She looked at Ben.

He spoke up at last, and his voice was as soft as Rey had ever heard it. “We’ve met before. A long time ago. You were very kind to me.”

“I know,” said D’Acy. “And I want you to remember that. People _are_ kind, on the whole. Your mother most of all, under all her fire.”

Ben looked back at D’Acy steadily. “I know. We have our own battles to fight, but we’ll be fighting for you too.”

The way he said it, so calm and resolute, almost made Rey’s heart burst out of her chest with pride. It must have showed on her face, because her friends on the other side of the screen relaxed, little nods and glances between them showing that they understood.

\- - -

That was the hardest conversation. Afterwards Ben was very quiet. He sat for a long time with his hands hanging uncharacteristically loose, frowning. Rey sat by him quietly and waited.

“I don’t suppose they’ll ever forgive me,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “They wanted to call me a monster.”

“It could have gone worse. They could have called you Kylo Ren,” said Rey, trying to smile. But she couldn’t really bring it off. “They’ll see, though. When we bring down Hux, they’ll see what you’re about.”

“Let’s show them, then,” said Ben, and took her hand to lead her to the _Pretty Thing’s_ cockpit. “No point waiting around.”

 _Oh but there is_ , thought Rey. _These days might not last..._

They flew to find the abandoned assault ship first. Rey’s memory proved accurate, and they emerged from hyperspace to find the wreckage of an old battle floating against the star field. The _Conquistador_ was as she’d remembered it. It still had much of its armaments, but its hull was breached to the vacuum of space and the capacitors were gone.

“Whoever did this was good,” said Rey. She floated next to the gap in the structure where they should be, noting down the measurements on her pressure suit’s external wristpad. “Very tidy removal. It’ll be easy to hook up another set. And I was right; I know Unkar Plutt always has a ton of these.”

After scavenging a full tank of fuel from the floating hulks, they flew to Jakku. The _Pretty Thing_ was probably the finest ship ever to land in Niima Outpost. The daytime loafers stopped what they were doing to watch. Rey scanned the crowd quickly. There were faces she knew; none of the people who’d been halfway decent to her, though. Those people would be out in the shipfields, working. She hardened her face against the stares and murmurs of surprise from those who recognised her. Shoulder to shoulder with Ben, they sought out Unkar Plutt.

“Little Rey! I thought you were gone for good. You’ve lost my ship, I see,” were his first words. “But nice trade. Your new ship…”

Beside her, Ben was as tense as a blaster bolt, hand on the hilt of his lightsaber. The sight of Unkar Plutt sizing up Rey with his crafty little eyes was almost enough to push him over the edge. Rey put a warning hand on his arm. “Make him an offer he can’t refuse, Ben.” She didn’t try too hard to keep the smugness out of her voice. It was a dream come true to confront Unkar like this, with Ben a stormcloud of threat at her side.

He was tall enough to lean his elbows on Plutt’s counter. “Give us the capacitors we want, and you can keep your head attached to your body, you repulsive little despot.”

Rey had spent the journey repairing her lightsaber, and when, to her great satisfaction, Unkar Plutt refused, she thoroughly enjoyed helping Ben carve up his office while he hid inside, peering through the gaps in the metal walls and shouting for his enforcers to do something.

The sight of Ben and Rey deflecting his thugs’ blaster bolts with their lightsabers proved persuasive in the end.

“Take that junk and go!” he yelled at last.

Rey picked out two capacitors and Ben forced Unkar to loan them a luggabeast to haul them back to the _Pretty Thing_. Before they left, Rey found the locker where Unkar kept his portions. She took them out by armloads and threw them out on the ground in front of Unkar’s office. “There’s enough for everyone.” Shading her eyes, she looked out past the skimpy shade of the tent. The sun was sinking and the scavengers were returning from their day’s work, trailed by their lengthening shadows. Some hauled their finds behind them; too many travelled empty-handed.

“Wait, Ben.”

It was like a fairytale, to stand at the edge of Niima Outpost with her hands full of food, more than she’d ever seen when she was a child. She put aside thoughts of who had been kind to her and who had not, but simply called everyone by name as they came in from the outfields. “Here, take these portions. Silvy, here, take these. No’u’ap, here, these are for you. Mezutzup, is your father still around? Take these for him too.”

It was surprising how timid their voices were, these people she’d known. “Rey! Where have you been? What are you doing?” Rey only shook her head. Explanations would only destroy the moment. Ben stood at her side, watchful, his hand on the hilt of his lightsaber.

Unkar reappeared around the side of his ruined office as they left. “If you ever get tired of him, I could offer you a place here, Rey,” he called after them. “It’s a solid business. It’d be an equal partnership, now you’re all grown up.”

“The gods love a trier,” said one of the enforcers with a wry grin. Injured early in the skirmish, he’d lain down to see who’d win. “You have to admit, Plutt never gives up.”

Rey snorted and tugged on the luggabeast’s harness so it lumbered after her. Beside her, Ben slogged through the sand, bristling with offended dignity. But by the time they got back to the ship, they both saw the funny side of it. Rey had to lie down in the shade of the ship’s landing struts until she’d finished laughing.

But as they left Jakku, Ben changed. The man of only a few minutes ago, leaning helplessly on the _Pretty Thing’s_ hatch and laughing his hoarse bark of a laugh, vanished. Now, there were lines of pain on his face as he stared out of the front viewscreen. Below them, hypnotic lines of dunes made an ocean of reddening gold from horizon to horizon. Beautiful, and Rey felt a pang for that beauty. Even in her hardest days, she’d trusted in the benison of evening light to work its magic on the sand and on her spirit. But Ben did not see it. His eyes were far away, staring down monsters.

“This is where it all began,” he said softly, and their Force bond, which had lain dormant for weeks, seemed to tense and darken the air between them. “Some things…I don’t know if there’s any way to atone for them.”

“You don’t know yet,” said Rey firmly. But it was an uncomfortable reminder that Ben’s past would always cast its shadows. He hadn’t told her everything. No matter how much she loved him, if he continued his silence, it would one day become as heavy as a lie. A denial of his whole person, for good or ill. She was willing to wait, but not forever.  
\- - -


	28. Against Hux

So now they had a working assault ship and the _Pretty Thing._ With another week’s work using the _Conquistador’s_ own tools, they managed to get life support working in the command deck.

Through it all, Niney kept a running commentary on the First Order’s comms channels. Her analysis suggested the First Order’s ambition had spread its forces paper-thin over the galaxy. Their press-ganging of unwilling workers from neutral systems was making them more unpopular by the day. And they were desperate for ships and weapons. An assault ship like theirs, in working order, would be a tempting offer, and one they might not examine too closely.

\- - -

Rey sat on the floor of the _Conquistador’_ s airlock, screwing in some hinges to the secret exit hatch they’d just made. It was designed so they could leave the ship without opening its main hatch and its highly-visible ramp. Ben squatted on his heels, silently dropping the screws into her hand as she reached for them.

“How can you be comfortable sitting like that?” she asked. “One thing I wanted when I lived on Jakku was a chair. Everybody who was anybody in Niima Outpost had their own chair. I planned to steal one from the water stall and take it to my hide-out one day…”

Ben laughed fondly. At first her stories of Niima Outpost had outraged him, but already he’d learned better than to pity her; if she looked up at him now she’d see only admiration. Such a survivor.

“So, these girls you know who can get us into the _Finalizer_ … ” said Rey.

Ben winced. “I owe them. I mean, they stole my lightsaber, but I’ve stolen their ship. This way we’ll be even. They get the bounty on the assault ship and they get the Pretty Thing back, and we get smuggled into the _Finalizer.”_

“Why them?”

“Because they’re smart and cunning.” There was a lot more Ben wasn’t telling her; he wouldn’t quite meet her eyes. Rey stared hard at him. “They played me like a…” he began, but couldn’t finish. A flush mounted to his ears.

Rey suppressed a smile. She tightened the last screw, and stood up to look at their handiwork.

“The seams stick out a bit. You can tell it’s new,” said Ben. He scuffed his feet over the floor to hide the shiny edges where they’d cut the metal.

Rey scuffed her feet next to his and they circled the hatch, spreading around the dust and grunge of the old decking to cover up the signs of their work. Ben stepped in and took hold of her arms and it became a slow, funny dance around and around the airlock. “One day we’ll do this with music,” he said, his breath stirring her hair. She leaned into him, smiling, while he described a dance he’d seen once. Han and Leia had been at some formal function, but it had turned into something else, with the two of them on the ballroom floor. Strangely intimate, almost vulnerable, for two such public figures. “I’d forgotten I had that memory,” Ben said. “Things like that, I haven’t been able to talk about in years,” he marvelled.

\- - -

Niney managed to get a message to Ben’s Canto Bight friends through a comms booth at the casino. One of them called back a day later. She was wearing a sea-green silk gown that left Rey dumbstruck. “Ben, your, ah, friend is on the comms,” she called, her voice cracking over a suddenly-dry throat. The woman in the imager curved her improbably bright and glossy lips, arching one perfect brow.

Ben rushed into the cockpit and scrambled himself into the comms chair. “Tuaua!”

Rey stepped out of range so she could observe Tuaua without being seen.

“Salvage, you say?” Tuaua’s voice was cool and smooth, like her. Behind her, Rey could make out a confusion of colourful fabric and little bottles and jars. Probably makeup, Rey guessed. The room’s casual feminine clutter hardly matched the sleek perfection of its owner.

“Yes. An assault ship,” said Ben. “All you have to do is bring it in to the First Order’s flagship, and all this is yours.” Ben leaned back from the holoscreen so the imager could take in a good view the _Pretty Thing’s_ interior.

 _“Our_ ship,” said Tuaua, with a twist of her perfectly made-up lips. But there was humour in her eyes too. “You learned a thing or two on Canto Bight, didn’t you?”

Ben shrugged. “You’re all scoundrels.”

“And so are you, now,” said another woman, appearing over Tuaua’s shoulder on the screen. She was shorter and much friendlier-looking, her round and freckled face all smiles. She leaned into the screen to get a better look at Ben. “Oh look at you! You were so cute when we first met you in the Casino. What happened?”

“He grew up!” said Tuaua with a snort, and both girls laughed.

“How’s your mother, Teezia?” asked Ben abruptly.

The shorter woman brightened. “Really well, thank you! She’s in excellent health. Oh, we took over Dancing Boy—he still had half a year’s free feed from that deal you won playing Hazard Toss.”

“Teezia’s mum’s been managing him, with some help from the stable boy,” said Tuaua. “You know, your friend Blagg. He’s had some nice wins for them. She’s moved into a better house and everything.” Tuaua’s polished facade slipped for a moment, and she gave Teezia such a fond look that Rey’s jealousy evaporated. Whatever they’d done with Ben, their deepest feelings were for each other.

“We can set Mum up with her own business if you want Dancing Boy back,” said Teezia. “We’ll sign his papers back to you, it’s no trouble.” She smiled, her eyes sparkling mischievously at Ben. “Our forger’s very good, he can do it in a jiffy.”

“This other ship, though. It’s in working condition?” said Tuaua.

“Yes. Some hull damage, but it just needed a few repairs to get the drive working. So, you fly it to the _Finalizer,_ sell it, and take home the _Pretty Thing,”_ said Ben.

The two women looked at each other and even though they were millions of light years away, for an instant their thoughts were crystal clear to Rey. _What bounty would the First Order pay for Kylo Ren?_ Teezia’s eyes crinkled up with long half-moon laughter-lines and Tuaua nodded slightly, her perfect lips pursed as she suppressed a smile. _So much more fun to see how he’ll make the First Order pay!_

“How do we find the _Finalizer?_ ” asked Teezia.

Niney chittered coordinates from the other seat, where she was monitoring communications around Serillon Station.

“Oh, that darling droid!” said Teezia.

Ben snorted. “Darling droid says the _Finalizer_ hasn’t moved from where we left it. But it might not stay there forever. Can you get a shuttle to Rantine Station? We’ll meet you there,” said Ben.

“Who’s ‘we’?” asked Tuaua.

Rey moved back into view, holding up a vibrospanner she’d been fiddling with. “Mechanic,” she said.

After they’d arranged a date and time to meet, Ben shut the holocomm off. “Mechanic!” He pulled Rey closer to his seat and buried his face against her stomach, laughing. Then he was lifting her top so he could kiss her bellybutton, and Rey was laughing too. He could be so silly.

Moody Ben. One minute he was making plans over the holocomm with normal people, like a normal person himself. The next moment kissing and blowing bubbles against her stomach like a child, and laughing his outsized laugh. In their month together Rey had learned enough to keep a hand on his shoulder, massaging gently and waiting for what she called “the flinch”. Any minute now he’d freeze and swallow his laughter, and for an instant the thought would hang in the air between them. _Who or what is watching?_ Waiting for Snoke’s contempt to uncoil like a serpent from wherever it had slept inside Ben’s head since he was a child. Snoke might be dead, but his beliefs had a life of their own.

Rey wished she had been the one to kill Snoke. It had been too quick.

\- - -

Days later the _Pretty Thing_ was docked at Rantine Station waiting for Teezia and Tuaua. Rey spent the time making a quick call to the Resistance. Connix appeared on the holoimager, looking harried. Her hair had fallen out of its tidy coils and she was trying to pin it back up with one hand as she centred Rey’s holoimage with the other.

“How’s it going?” asked Rey.

“Busy,” said Connix. A hank of hair escaped and she hissed with annoyance as she tried to wind it back into place with impatient hands.

Rey winced in sympathy. Her own triple-bun hairstyle had been difficult too. On Jakku it had been a point of pride to keep it despite the challenges. Connix probably felt the same. “Well, hold off on doing anything too heroic for a while,” she told her.

Connix frowned. “Too heroic” was loaded language in the Resistance, shorthand for “getting too many people needlessly killed”.

“Tell Finn we’re going to take down Hux,” Rey continued.

Connix gave her a baffled smile. “Okay. Good! I guess?”

Finn sprang into the image, eyebrows raised halfway off his face. “I heard that. You’re going to…”

Ben leaned over and broke in. “We’re going to attack the First Order. So don’t do anything risky until you hear from us again.” Covertly, Rey laid a hand on his knee and gave him an encouraging squeeze. It couldn’t be easy to face Finn like this.

Poe’s voice came through faintly from the background, mimicking Ben’s words sarcastically. “We’re going to attack the First Order.” She could have slapped him. It wasn’t as if Poe was any stranger to making bold claims himself. Luckily Ben didn’t hear him.

“Poe,” said Finn, without looking round. He’d grown since Rey saw him last. He didn’t raise his voice, but it was obvious he didn’t need to. Poe fell silent and Finn focused on Ben and Rey. “If you — after you take down Hux,” he said, “What then?”

They discussed a few details briefly. Ben and Rey both felt the First Order had to be dismantled with care — too catastrophic an ending would simply invite the galaxy’s worst elements to take over where they saw a power vacuum. The New Republic was too thinly-stretched to step in immediately.

“Imagine hundreds of systems ruled by thugs like Unkar Plutt,” Rey told Finn. Beside her, Ben quietly folded his fingers around hers. The thought of her indenture to Plutt still made him angrier than it did Rey, for whom it was past and done with.

“I never met Unkar, but I could see the state Jakku was in,” Finn agreed.

“Some systems looked to the First Order for leadership because they were sick of disorder,” said Ben. “We should support that until those systems can govern themselves.” His face was intent, as though seeking to cast some energy through the imager towards the far-off Resistance. Rey took the chance to admire his profile as he outlined their plans to Finn. She wondered if the others saw his passion for justice. To her, it shone through so strongly at moments like these, when he leaned into the imager, wholly focused on his listeners. He had a side to him that was almost scholarly, and his knowledge of galactic history and politics was fascinating.

Poe, at least, saw only the man who had once tortured him. “Dictators always start out by saying they’re a temporary measure. Then somehow the right time to hand over power never comes,” he said sourly. He was lounging in the background, but his relaxed pose fooled nobody. It was a form of resistance. He didn’t like where this conversation was going.

“Everything I thought I knew was wrong, Poe,” said Ben, addressing Poe so directly that he straightened up from his mutinous slouch. “Everything I thought I wanted was a waste of time. Including power.” He returned to Finn. “They stole years of my life too.”

Finn nodded, but Poe broke in again. “You had a choice,” he said.

Finn looked round at him. “Maybe not as much as you think, Poe. I only saw Snoke from a distance once, but we’d all see how people reacted to him.”

“When Ben used the Force on you, you resisted as hard as you could, didn’t you?” asked Rey suddenly.

Poe’s eyes flashed dangerously at the memory. Rey went on softly. “It didn’t do a bit of good, did it? Can you imagine how Snoke would have worked to control somebody as useful as Ben? The Force gave us power, Poe, whether we wanted it or not,” said Rey. “To Snoke, Ben looked like the perfect tool.”

“I don’t want to sit on Snoke’s throne, or anything like it,” said Ben. “Seeing people jump at my command gives me no pleasure.”

“But your trust would,” Rey added softly.

Poe nodded at last. “Okay.” He gave a harsh laugh. “Tell you what, if you take down Hux, we’ll split a bottle of Corellian brandy next time I see you. We can talk about it then.”

Ben gave him a half-cracked smile. “We should.”

Finn took over the screen again and looked at Rey and Ben in turn. The judgement in his gaze was not unkind. Leadership suited him. “May the Force be with you,” he said at last.

Rey smiled. “And with you,” she said, and signed off.

Teezia and Tuaua arrived shortly afterwards. Rey did a double-take when she saw them: Tuaua had transformed herself from a sultry sexpot into a high-powered businesswoman; Teezia followed her, datapad in hand, playing the part of a highly efficient personal assistant. After everyone was introduced, they settled into the _Pretty Thing’s_ lounge. “Our home away from home,” said Teezia, plopping herself down on a lounger. Tuaua kicked off her high-heeled shoes and laid her legs across Teezia’s lap with a sigh of pleasure. It was obvious they had eyes only for each other, and Rey pitied anyone who’d believe otherwise. Ben included.

Teezia opened her travel bag and unrolled a pair of orange coveralls. “See if these fit,” she said, holding them up to Ben. “We found some guy about your size and figured your need was greater.” She glanced over at Rey. “Sorry. We weren’t sure what _you’d_ need.” She softened the comment with a smile.

Rey shrugged. She’d fixed up the clothes she’d been given while she was in captivity; the black tunic and pants would be nondescript enough to pass muster on the Finalizer. People off-duty all seemed to wear something similar.

Ben held up the coveralls against his frame.

“See, there’s a hood. You can hide your hair,” said Tuaua.

A quick flight took them back to the _Conquistador_. Any longer would have had Rey climbing the walls. Tuaua and Teezia were good company, easygoing and full of funny stories about their adventures. But it was a small ship and Ben’s stiffness around the two friends made it hard for Rey to relax.

They parked the _Pretty Thing_ in the _Conquistador’s_ hold and started up the big ship’s engines. The whole structure shook as the hyperdrive growled through its warm-up sequence.

“It sounds worse than it is,” said Rey, nodding to Ben. Together they punched buttons and pulled toggles until the stars in the forward viewscreen smeared into bright lines and they were on their way.

And then they were there. The _Finalizer_ made a glowing triangle on the ship’s holoscreens, orbiting the larger dot of Serillon Station.

Ben and Rey would finish the journey inside the _Conquistador’s_ bulkhead behind the command centre airlock, along with Niney. As they went to their hiding place, Tuaua was calling the _Finalizer_. Behind her, Teezia stood holding a datapad, looking businesslike.

“Requesting permission to land. We wish to discuss a salvage deal. Please put us in touch with your officer in charge of procurements,” said Tuaua, her voice smoothly professional.

Rey pulled the wall panel into place behind them and Niney zipped in a couple of screws to hold it. Then there was nothing for Rey to do except stand in the dark, leaning into Ben’s broad chest.

It wasn’t long before the ship’s engines were powering down, and soon after that, the airlock rang with Tuaua’s tinkling laughter as she welcomed the First Order’s officers into the ship and showed them around. After they left, there was another vibration under their feet. “They’ll be towing us into the engineering bay,” said Rey. Ben wrapped his arms around her and they stood in the darkness, swaying together. Rey felt Ben’s smile against the top of her head, then he dropped his head and kissed her neck. She twisted round to kiss him back.

He slid a hand under her shirt and walked his fingers up until he could cup one breast. “We probably have time…” he breathed into her ear.

Rey’s nipples stood to attention and a hot flush spread down to her groin.

“When you two have finished interfacing, we could leave,” said Niney eventually. “The ship stopped moving five minutes ago.”

Ben and Rey untangled themselves and emerged from their hiding place. The airlock cams showed they were, as expected, in the engineering bay. It was empty apart from piles of engine and hull parts. Actual ships were lacking; if all their engineering bays were like this, no wonder the First Order had jumped at the chance to buy their _Conquistador._ Old as it was, it was still in near-working condition, just needing repairs to the hull and armaments.

They opened the secret hatch they’d made, lowered a rope and climbed out, keeping close to the cover provided by one of the landing struts. Niney used her claws to rappel down after them like a large and clever insect. Ben threw the rope back up and shut the hatch with a wave of his hand and a Force push. They made their way silently out of the _Finalizer’s_ engineering bay.

Just as they reached the exit they heard a yell.

“Hey! You two!” A couple of soldiers in engineering coveralls dropped out of a gigantic engine block by the door.

“Technical crew,” said Rey smoothly, though her heart was knocking at the back of her throat. “We were brought along to make sure that old _Conquistador_ got here in one piece.” She smiled brightly.

Ben bared his teeth in some semblance of a smile as well. “You don’t need to see our IDs,” he said. The Force wound about him, sticky with persuasion. The two First Order crewmen returned their own rather forced smiles, but there was still a hint of suspicion in their eyes.

“Can you point us to the nearest mess hall?” said Rey. “Do we need credit chips or can we eat as guests?” Mentioning food was always a good ice-breaker, in Rey’s opinion. It must have worked, because they were waved through the exit with instructions to turn left and head up to Cresh 19.

“We could get around more easily if we had proper uniforms,” said Rey as they walked down the corridor. “Could Niney get us some?”

“Niney could,” said Niney. “But Niney would rather make somebody else fetch and carry. Or better, we can go to the medical wing. When I was locating medical supplies for Teezia’s mother, I noticed that crew members in the infirmary are asked to shed their uniforms, which are kept in a storage locker until they are discharged.”

They followed Niney to one of the _Finalizer’s_ medical centres. Sure enough, a small door led to a locker room full of shelves of neatly-folded black uniforms and racks of armour.

“CZ-4490 is a size 12. I’ll be him,” said Ben, checking labels. “You’re probably a seven. Let’s see….do you want to be NR-5739?

Rey grinned and took the clothes he handed her. They’d been washed and ironed. “The First Order, orderly as ever,” she muttered as she put them on.

Next came the armour. They helped each other strap it on. Then they were just the same faceless white figures as a thousand others on board. They tucked their lightsabers into their belts where a stormtrooper would holster their blaster. With only the butt of the hilts showing, there was nothing to draw attention. There was no reason for anyone to notice them.

— — —

Niney pulled her slicing terminal out of the port she’d accessed. “There is a meeting of the First Order High Command at 15:00 hours,” she said. “It’s in conference room Besh-One.”

“Good work Niney,” Ben said, and turned to Rey. “We’ll give them fifteen minutes to settle in, and then pay them a visit.”

Rey gulped and nodded. She was used to fighting and escaping; deliberately starting a confrontation was much harder. “We should hide somewhere until it’s time,” she said.

Ben led the way to a near-empty quarter of the ship and they went into a sleeping cabin. It was close to the blocked-off section where Hux had turned the _Finalizer’s_ own guns on it in his attempt to assassinate Kylo Ren, all those months ago. Ben paced around and around, telling her about that night. If Rey leaned on the wall she could feel the vibrations from the repair work still going on. Her own nerves were vibrating almost as much.

When it was time, they stepped out into the corridor. Just another pair of white-clad drones in the _Finalizer’s_ vast hive. But within the Force, Ben was alive with such nervous energy that the deck under Rey’s feet seemed to tremble, presage of an earthquake to come.

There were fewer stormtroopers on level Besh, a deck mostly reserved for officers. Still, nobody questioned their presence, and they made their way unopposed to a final corridor. At the far end, a set of large doors was emblazoned with a First Order symbol as tall as the pair of Praetorian Guards standing on either side. Rey’s heart accelerated.

“Don’t be fooled by the armour,” muttered Ben. “They’ll just be trainees. We got the rest of them already.”

“I’ll be here if you need me,” said Niney in binary. “Or somewhere nearby.” She spun off back round the corner towards the lifts.

Rey and Ben marched in step until they reached the guards, then stopped. “Let us through,” said Ben.

In silence, the guards lowered their electropikes to bar the door.

“Then it’s your unlucky day,” said Ben.

Rey hesitated. _Ben! I can’t just kill them in cold blood!_

The Force thrummed between them, sliding into that mode that had made them one integrated fighting unit last time they faced these guards. _It’s not cold blood for me. Snoke used to make his guards hold me down while he hurt me. Including the trainees._

It was a good thing Rey couldn’t see Ben’s face right at that moment; the sudden twist of darkness in the Force told her what she’d see: brows drawn together in hard thick lines, eyes flashing. The sheer savagery of his aggression was not something she could ever get used to.

There was no stopping him in any case. His lightsaber was out and a moment later the Praetorian Guards were sprawled at his feet, smoking red lines cooling on their armour. Their electropikes spun uselessly on the floor for a second and sputtered into silence. Rey watched, one hand on her lightsaber hilt. Back on Ahch-To, Luke had quoted Obi-Wan rather bitterly on the subject of lightsabers. Something about weapons from a more civilised age. But they were a weapon of extremes, intended to kill, not disable.

“You coming?” Ben said, and leaned on the door to open it. Rey stepped resolutely up to stand beside him, and they marched in together.

A dozen First Order officers were seated around a large oval table with an overhead galactic holomap projection. They were listening to Hux, who was speaking at the head of the table. He broke off to look at the intrusion. A neat and tiny line formed in his forehead. “Yes?” he snapped. “Is this interruption really necessary?”

The sight of his face dissolved Rey’s reservations. She was the first to take off her helmet, throwing it down carelessly as she pulled out her lightsaber. Then she was striding towards Hux, flinging her feet out and stamping them down with an excess of violence the way she’d seen Kylo Ren do once, long ago in a snowy forest. Each footstep owning the deck. And beside her, blade swinging, Ben did the same, each heavy footfall in its stormtrooper boot announcing _this is mine, and this is mine, and this is mine!_

Hux was frozen in horror, his eyes fixed on the pair of lightsabers spinning and weaving towards him.

There was a crash of overturned chairs as the other people in the room scrambled to their feet. Some jumped onto the table, some dived under it. An instant later there was blaster fire coming at them from all directions. First Order command officers might have worn their weapons as a sign of status, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t use them.

The blasts made a web of intersecting beams. But Rey’s nimble blade deflected them all while she ploughed her way straight towards Hux. Ben simply hurled the boardroom table to one side, crushing half their opponents against the wall.

By then Hux had his blaster up too and was firing quickly, but his shots skipped off the Force protecting Ben and Rey. Ben made a harsh chopping gesture and the blaster flew out of Hux’s hands and into Rey’s. He lunged forward and grabbed Hux by the neck. Rey skipped behind him and held the blaster to his temple.

“What use are _you,_ if you’re any use at all?” she said mockingly, repeating what he’d said to her once.

The firing had stopped. High Command officers hadn’t got where they were by making rash decisions. The six people who were still uninjured and on their feet — or crouched behind overturned chairs — waited to see who would win. Hux was as tense as a snake under Ben’s hands, ready to twist and strike. Rey jabbed him in the hamstrings with her armoured knee, forcing him to the floor.

Ben spoke at last, his voice hoarse with feeling. “So, do you want us all to go on this way?” The officers stared back at him warily, confusion on their faces. Ben went on. “Remember that time on Crait I threw Hux across the command shuttle’s cockpit using the Force?” A few nods from his listeners, and some of them tensed up even further, clearly expecting more of the same. “Remember all those times Snoke reached out with the Force and crushed whoever disappointed him?” Ben glared around the room.

The officers nodded fractionally, risking a few sidelong glances at each other. _Where was this going?_

“Such a _stupid_ use for that kind of power. We’ve got better things to do with it. Unless you want a return to those days, then you’ll hand over _political_ power to us. Effective now. I’m sure we can work out a less crude way of maintaining order.”

Gulps. Exchanged glances. Finally one man stepped forward. “Yes, Supreme Leader.”

“Supreme leaders, that is,” corrected Ben.

Rey showed her teeth around the room in a queasy smile. _Supreme Leader?_

“You. Captain Dench," snapped Ben. "Get me on the hypercomm link. You, Goudy, can make an announcement to the _Finalizer_ crew.”

“Ah, will you be wanting some sort of ceremony? A coronation?”

“No!” said Rey hastily. “Or...aah, maybe later. Just bring up the comms. We have some announcements to make.” She put her hands on her hips and reached inside her for that cool voice of command she’d found once before. “This war ends now.” She looked around the room and dared anyone to contradict her. The remaining officers stiffened and glared back. Despite their rigid faces, their thoughts were easy enough to pick up in the charged air of the Force. _We can’t just stop fighting. We’ll be swallowed alive by a hundred systems we haven’t subdued! It’ll be chaos. We need to convince these Supreme Leaders to lead this war. They must focus on our victory!_

“Apparently you don’t care too much who leads you,” Rey said contemptuously. “It’s the idea of giving up war completely that you can’t stomach.”

“Well it’s over now,” said Ben. “And if you don’t like that idea, you can join Hux on a trip to the Resistance headquarters!” He gave Hux a shove.

Hux twisted down, rolled aside and scrambled to his feet, scooping up a fallen blaster as he did so. “Never! I’m not giving in, and neither should any of us!” he yelled, aiming the blaster at Ben. Ben raised his lightsaber lazily to cut him in two. His power was so manifest that no matter how fast Hux tried to fire, nothing would stop that blade coming down. Hux might have been glued in place, his finger forever stuck on a trigger that would never move.

In that moment the Force flexed and strained around them. Rey staggered, unbalanced as Besh One was suddenly overlaid with a Force vision that made the room branch into long corridors of possibilities. A thousand futures flickered around Ben and Hux. They were coalescing around one dark vision, a future born in violence that spiralled down into endless chaos.

But there were other possibilities too, including a narrow, rapidly-closing way that led to the light. If Rey could act in time, they would be flung into that future like a stone into a pond. The right choice, and the ripples spreading out from that moment might one day settle into calm.

Rey still had her blaster, and unlike a lightsaber, it had a stun setting. She used it, and Hux went limp in Ben’s hands. Ben’s blade was still descending to finish him when Rey’s own blade swung up to block it.

They stood poised against each other in perfect balance, arms straining and blade locked to blade, while red and blue lightning danced between them. In the silence, Hux’s unconscious body crumpled to the floor between them and the blaster dropped from his nerveless fingers.

Waves of power travelled up Rey’s spine and strengthened her arms, yet as she stared into Ben’s eyes it seemed he would never give in. All the evils in his past had returned. If she looked away for an instant, if she even _blinked,_ they would rule him for eternity. So she stood, arms raised, and faced him with all the iron in her soul laid bare.

At long last, the humanity returned to his face. His lips parted on an intake of breath, and the darkness faded from his eyes. They both slowly lowered their lightsabers together. Ben released his breath in a long gust and his shoulders dropped as though a rolling a great weight off his back. He nodded slowly.

His thoughts were muted, trembling on the edge of horror and regret. _Thank you._

 _I had a Force vision,_ Rey thought. _A better future can’t be begin with an execution._

The watching First Order officers understood enough of what had just happened to bow their heads to Rey. If Ben had killed Hux, he wouldn’t have stopped there. “My Lady,” they murmured.

Aloud, Rey said, “We’ve had enough fighting. We’re calling the Resistance. If anyone wants to stand trial on Warlentta alongside Hux, they’re welcome,” she said. “Or you can support us. We have lots to do.”

The First Order officers were all standing in a wary clump. “What, exactly…” one of them began.

“Lots,” said Rey firmly. “Peace treaties to settle, reparations to make, stormtroopers to reunite with their families…”

“Electoral processes to engage with,” said Niney, rolling in briskly through the door. She was holding a clutch of neural chips in one claw. “I notice you’ve been junking your protocol and diplomacy droids. I recommend that you reverse that.”

“Elections,” said Ben, and gave a short bark of laughter. He turned to the officers. “Popularity is going to matter. You’ll need to find better things for the First Order to do.”

“Yeah. Like what can we do about the famine on Hoth? Why are there strikes on Corellia all the time?” said Rey, firing up. “Why can’t stormtroopers help with climate remediation projects? Why shouldn’t the _Finalizer_ deliver emergency supplies to disaster areas?”

“Why are there still slaves on Tatooine?” said Ben forcefully. “And Cantonica, and a thousand other worlds?” He glared at the First Order command officers.

“All fascinating problems,” said Niney with relish. Her voice had changed slightly, and Rey suspected she’d found fresh neural chips to snort. Diplomacy droids probably knew a great deal about economics and political theory. Rey met Ben’s amused glance. He was clearly thinking the same thing. There was next to no chance Niney had any astromech chips left at all.

Niney continued, speaking to Rey in binary, “I have a number of the _Finalizer’s_ droids reporting to me personally. They’ll alert me to any sign of hostility or opposition from the First Order on board.”

A mouse droid glided in and handed Niney a pair of restraints. Niney gave them to Rey. “I presumed you’d need these. I am pleased to see that my predictions have been satisfied.”

Rey smiled. “I do, thank you.” She bent down and snapped them on to Hux’s wrists. Ben hauled him upright, but he did not wake.

One of the officers nodded at a console against one of the walls. “Our communications array is available there, Sir, ah, and Lady.”

Rey went over to it and keyed in her Resistance codes. Ben stood beside her, holding the still-unconscious Hux upright against him.

Finn answered. He looked at the tableau on his screen: Hux, wrists bound in front of him, slumped in Ben’s grasp, and Rey standing beside them. He didn’t say anything for a long time, but when he met Rey’s eyes, his face widened into a proud smile and he slammed his hand down on the console in front of him. “You did it!” he crowed. He was laughing and pointing at her through the screen. “You! I knew you could do it! I just didn’t know how!”

“We did,” said Rey. She didn’t know what was best: Finn’s pleasure in their victory, his pride in her, or his faith that she’d find a way to do what she’d promised.

When he’d settled down and called the others to the screen, Rey said seriously, “We have a lot to do. Like we said before, we can’t just disband the First Order and let all its people loose without a path forward to rejoining the galaxy. They’ll just find a new leader and start over again.” She glanced over at Ben, who hadn’t said anything yet. He nodded. There was no way the next part could come from him, so Rey squared her shoulders and turned back to the imager. “We’ve taken over the First Order for now,” she said.

Poe leaned past Finn into the screen. “So you’re…you two are Supreme Leaders now?”

“Yes,” said Ben, stirring beside Rey. “Both of us. And what we want to do is make the First Order stand for some kind of system people can agree on. An Order that builds, not just something that controls. Some systems want what the First Order promised, after all. But if it doesn’t deliver that, there should be a way they can leave without going to war over it.”

“What about Hux, and leaders like him?” asked Poe. He was very deliberately not looking at Ben to include him in “leaders like him”, but the implication hung in the air.

Rey leaned against Ben, so they faced the imager as a united front. “Hux planned the attack—” said Ben, and Finn said “Starkiller Base was Hux’s…” at the same time. They stopped and a look of understanding passed between them. Mutual loathing of Hux.

“The attack on the Hosnian system was different,” said Rey. “Leia talked about tribunals for war crimes. She thought it was important to find justice in a way that wouldn’t divide the galaxy worse than it is already.”

Ben added, “Then I think we need to start negotiating peace treaties.”

“Is this the real Kylo Ren?” asked Poe.

“My name is Ben Solo,” he said roughly, and his stare challenged Poe to disagree. “Not Kylo Ren.”

D’Acy broke in from where she stood leaning on the back of Finn’s chair. She pulled her arm out from behind her back to show them a bottle of Corellian brandy. “Poe, please remember whose son this is. I promise you  _Leia_ never forgot that.” She gave them her long, toothy worldly-wise grin, and waved the bottle into the imager. “Welcome back, Ben.”


	29. This Soft Conquest

It was the morning after their coronation. Rey woke still afloat on the strangeness of it all. The smell of incense and crushed flowers were still in her nostrils. Children had thrown blossoms at their feet, leading the procession to the coronation dais in the city square. Later, there had been a dinner at the Moon Palace, with rulers and dignitaries from near and far. Some, like Finn, attended via holoscreen. Rey’s tongue was furry with the toasts they’d drunk together.

After the dinner, Ben and Rey had returned to their rooms, tired from the day’s ceremonies but still moved by the tides of love. They’d washed up on the bed and grappled together in passion and laughter. Now she sat up among sheets tumbled about her in pale disorder. Ben was a deep-breathing shadow beside her, arms cast out and hands open in utter relaxation.

She bent to kiss his palms. The morning silence was so profound that she heard his eyelashes brush together as he blinked: once, twice, when he opened his eyes. Her fingers walked across the landscape of moles and scars on his chest. They made a map; one with its own history. “The only empire I ever wanted,” she said softly.

He turned and she moved so he could lay his head on her chest. His hair tickled her chin. With one fingertip he tapped out the rhythm of her heartbeat. “This soft conquest,” he said, his voice slow and distinct the way it went when he recited poetry. “This fistful of blood and sighs, this mystery that I have known since before I knew what knowing is.”

They were lyrics to a song by an artist Rose had recommended and whose music they had fallen in love with.

Long bars of pink light entered the room, laying blue shadows across Ben’s skin. He gazed at her with still-sleepy eyes. Rey smiled, sat up again and pulled aside the curtains to look outside. Their rooms were at the top of the Moon Palace; no great height, for although it was a beautiful building, it was quite small. It fitted the rather insignificant planet that was all the First Order could aspire to these days. Maybe it would one day become more important. Currently it served as a nexus for the First Order’s pioneering efforts in the Unknown Regions. Or as Rey called it, the Slightly Better-Known Regions.

Outside, somebody raised their voice in a paen, and other voices near and far took it up. It was the local culture’s welcome to each day as the first sun came up. The hum of the first transports started up from the roads heading out of the city into the fields. They would be filled with stormtroopers seconded into helping bring in the crops, and ex-stormtroopers. More and more of them were applying to leave military service, now that it was allowed. This was a good planet; the locals, always peripheral to recent wars, were friendly and glad of help. Stormtroopers who could not find their families might well settle here.

Ben came to stand by her and together they watched the day begin. Leaning back, Rey reached up and teased his hair around her fingers. He’d let it grow very long. Yesterday it had been captured in a circlet of gold; the crown the First Order expected of its new Supreme Leaders. Rey rubbed around his temples and above his ears, where the crown had chafed him. “It doesn’t fit very well, does it?”

“No.”

“Time’s up, I think.”

“It really is.” He laughed, deep and slow. “Emperor for a day. It’s enough.” His grin was lopsided; he was staring into some future that amused him a good deal more than the splendour of the previous day’s ceremonies had.

Rey laughed. “Do you know, Captain Doury came to me with a complete plan of how we could allocate our ships and troops for the next three Standard years to cover as many systems as possible. He had spreadsheets and flowcharts…”

“He was like that when he was a tactical specialist on the _Supremacy,_ too,” said Ben. “They’re all puzzles that he has to solve. There’s too much of this here, and not enough of it there, and he worries at the problem until he’s found the most efficient way to fix it. Makes no difference to him that it’s food now, not armaments.”

“I had lunch with him the other day. I think he does prefer it,” said Rey. "I’m glad we gave him a chance. I can’t believe how much he’s grown into the role this past year.”

“Him, and all the one’s we’ve promoted. I think that’s a gift the Force gives you, Rey. You can spot the ones who are willing to change. They want to build, not conquer.”

“You could name Doury your successor, if you don’t think he’d get elected.”

“Rey.” He took her face in his hands and let her see the idea taking root in him. Even before he spoke, her nerves tingled in anticipation. “Let’s do it now,” Ben said. “Doury, the new system council, all of them, they’re as ready as they’ll ever be.”

Rey met his eyes, reading the same heady mixture of joy and daring that bubbled up in her chest. “Sneak off?” she said.

“Why not?” said Ben. “Why else did we record those instructions, if we weren’t going to leave them?”

Ben glanced over at the wooden cabinet where they’d stored the recording. It was a legally binding contract, drafted and witnessed by Felucia’s leading constitutional lawyer. _In the Absence of the Reigning Emperor and/or Empress. Electoral Guidelines for Succession of Rule and Devolution of Power_.

Rey broke out of Ben’s grasp and skipped over to the cabinet. She opened the drawer, picked out the contract and laid it with a flourish on the table where they usually ate breakfast. Grinning, she turned next to an old chest. Their room was entirely furnished with antiques; this one held the practical, hard-wearing clothes Rey had inherited from the Resistance. She sighed and wriggled her toes happily as she pulled on her old soft boots. On the other side of the room, Ben was rooting about in the back of a wardrobe looking for something other than clothing fit for an Emperor. A few minutes later they were both dressed in dusty black and beige and grey travelling clothes. Both of them strapped on their lightsabers. Rey danced briefly from side to side, liking the slightly unbalanced weight it made on her hip.

“Let’s leave this on the throne,” said Ben, and picked up the Succession contract.

They made their way down through the quiet corridors to the palace’s small Throne Room, which had not been finished in time for the coronation. The second sun was rising as they entered, and clean white light streamed in through the arches of the eastern wall. It was a lovely, airy space, open on one side to views of the city below. In the morning light, the capital’s pretty white houses and pinkish stone buildings looked like sugar cubes. The room was dwarfed by a large angular shape hidden under a dropcloth. It had been rescued from the _Supremacy_ and installed in the Moon Palace in secret. Intelligence reports said that had piqued the interest of the tiny remnant faction of First Order hardliners on Serillon Station. News that some kind of ceremony was planned for it later in the week had raised their hopes still further. _Surely now our Supreme Leaders will take off the velvet gloves and show the galaxy what true dominion looked like._ Rey smiled.

Ben pulled off the dropcloth and stepped back. Snoke’s throne was too big for the pretty room; it made an ugly, brutal block that overshadowed the room’s proportions.

“Hideous,” Rey commented. “Shall I?” Ben nodded, and she unhitched her lightsaber. She stood for a moment, feet wide apart and the lightsaber ignited in her two hands. “Once on Ahch-To…” she said, but didn’t need to finish. Ben had practically been inside her head on the morning when she’d cut that rock formation in half. The steps, the technique had flowed into her, as easy as if she’d been practicing it for years. She’d stamped and twirled and slashed and something inside her had woken to say, _yes, yes, like this, yes!_

She did it again now, advancing on the throne with long sweeps that pulled the Force into her, tighter and harder until her arms thrummed with the tension and power of it. She took a final stride, lunging into the throne and slashing across it with such strength that the lightsaber slipped through it diagonally in one bright line of red fire. Ben was already prowling towards it as she sheathed her weapon.

“Hah!” he shouted suddenly, and his foot connected with the back of the seat in a roundhouse kick. The throne fell into two pieces and hit the floor with a sharp report.

Rey arranged the Succession document on the half of the seat that remained upright.

Ben regarded it, head cocked. “That sends a nice message, I think,” he said.

“No more thrones,” said Rey. “Not in the peaceable kingdom.” The words seemed to fly from her mouth of their own volition. The room resonated strangely in response to her voice. Rey stopped, wide-eyed. Suddenly the Force was present and potent around them. Invisible fingers seemed to walk up her spine and Rey shivered.

“The peaceable kingdom,” said Ben, looking similarly shaken. “Is that prophecy or hope?

Rey shook her head. “I — I don’t know where that came from. It’s as though something spoke through me.”

There was a beat of silence. The Force still echoed like the tolling of a distant bell, and sunlight pouring in the eastern archways made the room almost too bright to bear.

“I made two copies of the Succession documents for Finn,” said Ben at last, when it was clear nothing more was going to happen. “So the New Republic can keep an eye on what’s supposed to happen next.” His voice dispelled the strangeness of the moment before.

“I know that," said Rey. "But why two copies?”

Ben’s lips twisted up in a lopsided grin, dispelling the strangeness that still hung about the room. “When he opens his, there’s instructions to give the other one to Poe, along with a bottle of Corellian brandy.”

“Great, now Poe’s going to be dreading that any moment you might drop by to drink it with him,” said Rey, laughing. “And rub his face in how wrong he was!”

Ben laughed too. He took her hand and they walked across the blazing sunlit floor to the balcony overlooking the city. Below them the _Millennium Falcon_ sat on a duracrete apron, being polished by droids.

“I wonder how Niney’s getting on,” said Rey absently.

“She told me she’d postpone the droid revolution until she’s finished helping the Hutts set up a workable democracy.”

“That should keep her busy for a while.”

Ben thickened his voice into a Hutt accent. “How will we survive without slaves! It will mean the collapse of our economy!”

“We should definitely drop in and see how that’s all going,” said Rey. _And Tattooine. And Jakku,_ she thought. She stared at the spaceship below, perched so lightly on its duracrete pad.

“One day I think Niney’ll form a breakaway republic for droids. When she gets bored of us. But that’ll be a while. People and their problems keep her entertained.” He laughed the low staccato chuckle Rey had come to love, and she leaned into him.

“What would you like to do first?” she asked.

“Find Blagg. Kids like him must feel abandoned. We should help them learn about the Force.”

“I want to start there too. But I’ve changed my mind about setting up another Jedi school.”

“I was thinking the same thing!” said Ben. “Taking children away and putting them somewhere way out in the middle of nowhere to be trained…no. We should travel to them. We find them, we start them off on some basic training and leave them with a way to contact us? That way we can stay in touch and they can stay in their families until they’re ready to come to us. Or come with us, if we’re travelling around!”

“You said Blagg doesn’t have a family.”

“Well, we’ll help him look. Nobody’s even tried. But he’s just one case. How many children with the Force are out there?”

Rey shut her eyes and concentrated. Now she knew the Force better, it was easier to understand what she sensed. Force signatures made a different, brighter thread among the chaos that was life itself. _Imagine if I’d known this when I was all alone on Jakku!_ “Lots,” she said after a while. She opened her eyes again, and the day seemed brighter. Brimming with light, in fact. Filled with possibilities. Mostly the possibility of going somewhere else. “So we’ll travel to them.”

“Yes. Itinerant Jedi.”

“It’s not just young Force-users who need us,” said Rey. “We have promises to keep. Our promise to Anakin.” She sighed. As Supreme Leaders, they had done what they could to outlaw slavery in the territories the First Order still controlled. Finn’s New Republic was doing the same. But the galaxy was so big, and there was still more to do. Hopefully it could be done without starting more wars. “We can find out what’s really going on in some of those out-of-the-way places, anyway.”

“The Force will guide us. I believe that, now,” said Ben. “Do you know something? I worked out that you must have been born just when Snoke started to get control of me. As though the Force knew what it would take to bring me back from the brink. All those years ago, the Force had a plan…” He shook his head, marvelling.

“No!” snapped Rey. “I don’t believe that. I could have made other choices. I wasn’t bound to the light. I’m not just some tool the Force created to help you!”

“Oh Maker! I’m so sorry! Of course you’re not!” Ben bent down to cradle her face in his hands. “You have to understand why it looks that way to me. I needed to be saved so badly, and you saved me. From my point of view, that will always seem like a miracle.” He kissed her forehead, her nose, and at last, very gently, her mouth.

“You saved yourself,” said Rey. “And I’m with you because I choose to be. You make me happy.” She was almost crying, though she didn’t know why. “Let’s go. We’ll make sure children with the Force don’t grow up alone. We’ll free the slaves. We’ll finish what Anakin started.” She pulled on Ben’s hand, ready to lead him out the door and down to the _Millennium Falcon._

“Wait,” said Ben, and turned towards one corner of the room as though he’d heard something. The brightness of the room seemed to thicken in that one corner. Ben listened intently, head tilted, his eyes wide and shining.“Luke,” he said almost coaxingly. “I’m listening.”

For a moment Luke was visible to Rey too. The harshness was gone from him; there was pride in his gaze, and hope. Her heart leapt in response, a sudden wild spreading of wings inside her; grief and joy and the longing for freedom.

“They are what we grow beyond,” said Ben softly. “All our teachers.”

Fingers linked, they bowed their heads to Luke’s ghost, then looked up to watch it disperse, out the window, a luminous streak that went up, up, into the blue sky and beyond it to the stars that still awaited them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \-- --- ---- 
> 
> The End.
> 
> Thank you for my wonderful betas and everyone who came in with your sharp eyes and perceptive comments and questions. You all helped make this a better story: Eve, who maintains the Two Halves of Reylo collection on tumblr and AO3, Ida, Rachel, Christa, Andrea, and everyone else who stuck it out for the long haul.


End file.
